Deck the halls with Vicodin and Soma

I hate the holidays. I’m serious! Christmas time is the most horrible time for retail pharmacists. Why? The blatant lies, excuses, and just whining to get pain pills early.

Now normally dealing with people who need their stocking stuffed with CIII’s is pretty soul killing, but add on a good dose of holiday cheer and you have a prescription for a bottle of Jack and a nebulizer treatment of 00 buckshot.

I realize that some people do have legit holiday plans and need their stuff filled early. Thats fine. However when you call me on XMAS EVE and demand to have your Soma filled a week early because you are “leaving town for the holidays” and neglect to want all your other medication filled early as well (you know, blood pressure, diabetes, unimportant shit), that really doesn’t work. Whats that saying about a lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part? I should have that tattoo’d on my forehead (since most of my patients think I have the word STUPID tattoo’d on there as well).

Whats even more soul killing is when the patients sit there and say “I didn’t pick up my pain pills a week ago”. I pull the security tape and signature logs, and sure as shit its them. If its not them all I have to do is just mention calling the police and suddenly they realize who picked up their pain pills! AMAZING! I mean really, did they expect me to go “Oh, shit, that wasn’t you, it was a random person off the street who KNEW you had vicodin and soma ready to go HERE that was just called in this morning! Heres a refill plus a stock bottle of soma for your troubles!” Pulling shit like this only makes you look like a fucking addict, and
idiot, or a fucking idiot addict. Thanks for wasting my time, I hope
you OD and die.

(Cue the 100 people who have “legit pain” bitching about how I think everyone is an addict. Heres a tip, unless you prove it to me otherwise; you are, case closed. I’m a big hammer and I pound in nails in all day every day, so everything is a nail to me. Don’t like it? Go to pharmacy school and get lied to for 9 hours a day. Then, after you get burned on a few early refills, thank me for being right. If I were in “your shoes” I wouldn’t call the pharmacy 4 times a day asking when my pain pills are due; I’d be able to divide 90 pills at 3 times a day and make 30 days; and for gods sake I would be an active part in my care and not wait until I’m leaving town to ask for a fucking refill when I know I need a new Rx for that methadone script!)

The holidays are an absolute nightmare, and there isn’t enough gin in the world to fill the void that the unwashed addict masses have caused to my soul.

Merry Xmas and a Watson/QT/Mallinckrodt/Teva/Barr/whoever makes the narcs your crackheads like/etc New Year!

I still has a vicodin script I can’t fill cause I can’t afford it.
Fuck the Welfare fucks who don’t actually need it that can get it any time they want to, while I have to deal with only being able to get a script maybe 3 times a year.
If I can ration out a 30 day supply to last two-three months, then they can suck it up and make theirs last at least the 30 days.

Ken, your reply is hilarious. It’s great to see all these self righteous pharmacists get their panties in a bunch to defend themselves. As if the machine couldn’t have a single operator that reads the instructions to the patient. I was in pharmacy school for 2 years (at one the of the top pharmacy schools) till I realized that it was a mindless job that is filled with people who couldn’t do anything better. Just because I said filled with does not mean that EVERYONE is, just most 🙂 So I switched to pre-med. Now I work in the emergency room… We receive calls from the typical ‘angry pharmacist’ all the time saying. ‘Do you know you prescribed vicodin, a SCIII narcotic to a 20 year old boy?!’ No, I didn’t know that, hydrocodone and acetaminophen aren’t used to treat bad dreams? Maybe ask him to lift up his shirt so he can show you the 26 stitches I had to put in him after the surgeon pulled the 11″ stick out… that would go over well. You don’t know everyone (contrary to your belief).. not even a minor detail in what caused the condition.. which is why you are not the one doing the prescribing. Stop bitching and do YOUR JOB by filling the prescription.. or get a real degree. Your choice.

i called cvs today asked what kind of generic adderall they carry im not in college my life is a mess i was on ritalin bu hated it so i went on vyvanse. i switched to vyvanse because generic meds suck and at least ill get consistancy and actually be able to concecntrate and maybe keep a job. these pharmacists are a bunch of dick heads he went on to tell me we dont carry that med and it is over prescribed, i agree its over prescribed college kids take it to study but dont have add which is not fair because the quality is pathetic you basically pay to feel like shit and people that actually benefit from it suffer. But i didn’t ask him if it was over prescribed i asked what brand dont lable me you dont know me what i went through and why i am prescribed it some people do need this medication it helped with anxiety and depression alot more than any ssri i used to take klonopin since starting on these meds i dont feel the need to i also dont drink alcohol anymore was using it to self medicate and self destuct every couple months. dont tell me generic is the same we all know that is bullshit especially teva brand adderall. Why cant you miserable pricks keep your motherfucking mouths shut and fill the fucking script. At giant where i work i filled the script and tried to return it i don’t make enough money to wasts on shitty pills and she gave me a hard time and called me a drug addict like i would try some shady business at the pharmacy where i work. i reported her and have not seen her for a while but she is a real cunt so i hope she lost her job. all you have to do is fill pills i realize people try and pull one over on you with pain meds but add meds? give me a break my life has been shity enough i don’t need to be dicouraged and stop taking meds because ill go right back to self medicating. dont judgs people you dont know what they went through maybe you think your a hard ass but really you sound like a stupid douche bag hammer get fucked quit your job if you dont like it otherwise shut the fuck up and do your job i hate you mother fuckers i wish i could get a 3 month supply but cant and have to go every month a deal with the same shit.

I stumbled upon this piece of shit blog, obviously written by a piece of human shit ‘pharmacist’, who is apparently ‘angry’.
The fact you CHOSE freely to enter this ‘profession’, makes me think why should I give a fuck how angry you are? I don’t give a fuck how you feel about your shitty job.
Pharmacists are nothing but fucking monkeys who read a script and go to a fucking shelf and get it and put it in a bag.
A fucking vending machine could do your job, I think they’ve already started this in Japan 🙂
Essentially, you’re just a parasite on the whole pharmaco-industrial complex, doctor trade union, government stranglehold on the market for drugs.
You’re a paternalistic cocksucker, who has anointed themselves as a parasitic and superfluous middleman standing between consenting adults and the world pharmacological technology you played no fucking role in originating, researching, or providing humankind with in any way, other than standing in the way and demanding we pay tribute for your good grace in allowing us to cross the bridge.
I fucking hate pharmacists. You’re completely fucking pathetic. You’re nothing but the paternalistic warden, standing at the door of the warehouse of drugs, with your pathetic trade union ‘qualifications’, and your sickening mercantile attitude.
One only needs to read the last two months worth of posts on your shitty blog to see you don’t give a fuck about offering advice or spending any time with your so called ‘patients’, and are driven by your motive to be the most successful human vending machine of your graduating class.
However mindless what you do in your fucking white coat for eight hours is, you don’t care, you can get in your shiny car and go boating on the weekend I guess.
I fucking spit on you. You’re nothing but a parasite, driving up the cost of our access to a free market in pharmacology. You’re a throwback to a strong state paternalistic condescension that the fucking internet and the breaking of ‘professional’ monopoly on information the internet brings is going to break over its fucking knee.
I don’t need some superfluous cunt parasite like you to fucking ‘impart’ to me what the fuck I can, will and do find out myself. You’re just the fucking loss making me wait in a fucking line until you find the time to walk to a fucking shelf, read a piece of paper and sign off with your unelected, paternalistic ‘dispensation’ of a product I should have the right to buy direct from whoever the fuck makes it.
You’re truly the most pathetic waste of a human life. Not to mention the blood you have on your hands in handing out dangerous superfluous drugs to people of all ages.
The mere fact of your ‘profession’ even existing discourages people to research drugs for themselves.
As I said motherfucker, A fucking vending machine with a retinal scan or some shit could do your fucking job. You don’t earn your money, you don’t ‘earn’ a living at all. You provide absolutely nothing that a robot arm well placed couldn’t provide.
And as even YOU say, you’d rather fill some scripts than offer advice on drug safety to your ‘patients’.
Do you know how offended and amusing I found it that you useless pricks actually refer to us as your ‘patients’. That’s a laugh. Number one motherfucker, we don’t ‘choose’ to come to a pharmacist, we are coerced by the state to merely choose between you, limited to a group of monopolist parasitic assholes with trade union qualifications who stand between us and our fucking vending machine or robot arm, or direct relationship with Big Pharma buying in bulk…
To think that you honestly believe you have ‘patients’. Fuck ME!. What a joke. You have coerced people standing in a line that have been afforded absolutely no other way to get around your pathetic trade guild monopoly on drug vending. I’m sorry fuck head, the word ‘patient’ conjures up all these images of consent, choice, relationship, ah… maybe someone willing to actually spend time imparting what he or she themselves merely read online….
You’re truly one brutal, annoying, fucking waste of space. I stumbled upon this blog, I’ve always been appalled by your pathetic and useless ‘profession’, and to see some malignant cunt like you with such a bitter attitude toward the real professionals, the doctors, and the ‘patients’ that are forced to contend with human shit like you, just reaffirms how much your kind disgust me.
So FUCK YOU, and shut the fuck up, If you’re time’s so fuckin’ valuable, you stupid cunt, too valuable to help some old lady out, how the fuck do you find time to spew vitriol at the supposed community you are a ‘trusted part of’ on the internet every fucking night after work?
Your blog is nothing but a mindless exercise in venting your deep seated frustration at what a pathetic string of life choices led to your becoming an overeducated superfluous fucking human vending machine. You mindless automaton!
You’ve got some ‘rote learning’ smarts? Huh? To do a college degree and gain trade union protected tenure in the world of coerced dispenser choices for consumers? Wow. So impressive. Your parents must be so proud. All that rote learning capability and now you’re a pathetic blogger who thinks they could do a better job than the doctors… those who CAN, write the scripts, those who are human vending machines, read it, shut the fuck up and bag it.
A white coated piece of lost human potential. That’s your life pal. Nothing more.
Sure, there might be a place for someone who fancies themselves as educated in the myriad aspects of modern pharmacology… but if consumers want this man’s services, let them freely CHOOSE to seek him out and pay him for his time.
The sheer fact that you wedge, force, and parasite yourself to middleman status, is offensive to freedom, choice, and the public’s intelligence. But from reading your blog we can see what you think of your ‘patient’ group’s intelligence can’t we?
What a fucking piece of shit you are. I swear to God, give me a fucking vending machine that places a fucking sticker on a box and shuts the fuck up any day.
When I see, on my right, these archives, go back to 2005, I see what a long and lonely, cold, dismal, unfulfilled life you have ahead of you.
I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, I have absolutely no respect for you, your ‘profession’, or anything I’ve read so far on your sad blog.
In the end, this highly forgettable blog, is just a superfluous as what you’ve chosen to sell the majority of your finite time on this earth for.
You’re nothing but a paternalistic, unasked for, coercive, trade union tenure protected, superfluous middle man/woman (I don’t give a fuck what gender you are I didn’t notice, either way, die).
If I want pharmacological information, I’ll ask the internet, just like you fucking do asshole.
Until then, shut the fuck up, you chose this job don’t complain to the world you already hate anyway, pick up the pace, stand around and bag up drugs a print out stickers, and do it FASTER you fucking human pap smear!
You’re a fucking unelected ‘authority’ taking a price gouge out of every forced transaction that comes your fucking way, nothing more.
You’re nothing. You’re just like some dickhead at the DMV, ‘Government says it costs $40 for a plastic license card with your photo on it, so it does’.
You’re like ‘Government says you’re not an adult and can’t buy X substance without me taking my cut’. Fuck you.
And to read your appalling attitude, you’re sickening condescension to both community members and doctors, and just how fucking deeply, even scarily, counter intuitive that is when one looks at your ‘job’, is just something so fucking sad, so fucking barren and bereft of any spark of life left in you, that if I were your parent I would be appalled at what a husk of a human you’d become in adulthood.
Do the internet a favor, shut down your shitty fucking blog, and leave some bandwidth for the drug information I won’t get from some profit minded drug vending monkey without the time or the inclination to even look at others as human beings worthy of anything more than excoriating condescending blog posts.
You send out that energy to us, sometimes you get it back in spades motherfucker.
I seriously hope, that after a couple of needless, superfluous decades of standing up all day and humiliating yourself as a drug vending monkey, you slip a few spinal discs and die in god awful pain.
You’re the problem. You really are one sad, sorry superfluous fucktard aren’t you?
Next time I’m FORCED to deal with one of you pricks, I’ll think of this blog, and think of you, wherever you are, standing up all day like a fucking mcdonalds worker, following the assembly line instructions, with the smug college degree sureness that comes with deluding yourself that you’re anything but a hated parasite and a waste of human life.
Oh I like your little eugenic tinge to your blog posts too, very endearing you piece of rubbish. I always thought it would take a ‘special’ person to buy in to your trade union, your little patch of protected economic and big government monopoly price gouging… and a special person you are… real special. Your entire blog reads like the writing of some really regretful, bitter, pharma vending monkey wage slave, who doesn’t give a fuck about themselves and having a happy life, so why would you give a fuck about the people that are standing in line for your holy consent to hand over to adults some pharmacology?
I spit on you. I really do. If you did have mindless ‘rote learning’ talent in college, you surely could have put it to better use than becoming the dismal husk that stands before us, and your parents, today.
Peace out douche bag. Maybe you strike up a conversation with coke machine in the hall. I think you two would have a lot in common.
You fucking loser.

absolutely hillarious! Hey fellow dispensers- can u just begin to imagine if we were replaced by automation or vending machines? Either the patient with the macrolide allergy will get the zpak oooorrrr… better yet the vending machine will end up smoking and burning up trying to decipher and override all the DUR rejects it gets oooorrr…. most patients wont get their med b/c machine will have to call DR b/c of rejects!! lmao rofl! Loving it…..

Instead of having 4-5 of you GIANT decision makers there, there would be only 1 of you to decide those invariables. Kinda like the automated check out systems at the new shopping centers.

Drugstore clerks is all you are. Software could replace you like an ATM replaces a human bank teller. The REAL patient manager…the DOCTOR would be the ultimate overrider by the push of a button on his/her blackberry.

I bet 9 out of ten people would rather deal with a machine who is consistent and has not “gatekeeper” complex or “dr. envy” going on. I know there are a few decent checkout clerks, or I mean, prescription check out clerks, but too many of you have let your menial 9-5 “job” where you have to have social skills, as in any “retail” job. Please believe that the right engineering, software, and hardware is in the works to replace your asses, and just make big pharma richer and the doctors who “have the power” (and only the DR’s, not you) to decide what prescription their PATIENT gets RICHER!

It’s a few tough pills for you to count! So enough with the smugness and false sense of security and superiority you have to arm yourself with to get through your shit jobs without having the daily urge to swallow the permanent vacation cocktail that could put u out of your miserey.

Seriously man? Im learning how to save someone’s LIFE by mixing parenteral solutions to inject it into their veins. It’s also tough shit to know what drug is going to SAVE YOUR ASS when you get into an accident and you need a medication that will prevent you going into shock.

I dont recall swinging on any vines and plucking a damned bottled from a shelf and labeling stuff. Read a book and stop being so ignorant!!!!

Did your Dad rape you as a child?? That would explain your anger! Haha, you make me laugh. Have fun looking at your lonely self everyday in the mirror.
Then only way anyone will know that you have died is when the stench of your decomposing carcass prompts your neighbors to phone the police.
Smile and have a GREAT day!

Ken, this is when we (pharmacy staff) bite our tongues for the sake of FUCKING CUSTOMER SERVICE and let you talk rather then kicking your ignorant and pathetic ass. You guys are the low points of our day. This is a true story. One day, a fuck-nut (just as yourself) came to my pharmacy and started to rant just like you. I opened the door and invited him inside and told him, “there you go, go find your prescribed medication from the shelf, the right dose and all, enter it into the computer, process insurance, and enter the directions” (which your dumbass could tell the difference from FUCKING HIEROGLYPHICS)!! This is when your thinking you yourself “what does PO mean?? DUMBASS!! Then take that medication without any direction from me. Do it, PLEASE, and I’ll be seeing you in the emergency room in 2 days after you get liver poisoning!! So the next time you decide to speak in public, DONT!! The next time you go to a pharmacy, be nice, because they are smarter then you could ever be in 5 lifetimes. Thats all I have to say to you…Now, “do you have any questions for the pharmacist sir??”

+1 to that. People in developed countries do not realise how lucky they are to have all these services and medication just to be lying there on a plate for them. They should be grateful for what they do have, and stop moaning and start taking at least some responsibility for themselves.

I give this guy and “A” for the effort and heartfelt depth of his rant! As a nurse, though, I have to agree with TAP; the ER seems to get a plethora of “Back Attacks” and “Migraine Maladies” right before the holidays and summer vacation, when the kiddies are set free for the summer. Pour the Christmas Cheer and pass the Vicodin!

Your an idiot and I hope you’re dead. No on read your ramble. I read the first 3 sentences and realized your probably the fat lazy 57 retard who used the drive – thru today that’s supposed to be used for the handicapped, elderly and mothers who don’t want to wake their sick child. Go to hell.

sadly but truly, i know exactly how you feel…the past few days have been atrocious to say the least..i’ve heard everything from “i’m leaving town early” to “my grandmother died and I took some extra pills to cope”. But my favorite by far was a guy calling from 2 states away, trying to get his OXY cocktail all lined up for the holidays ( when i say cocktail, the guy had everything from oxycontin/oxycodone/oxy-apap/oxy-ibuprofen filled within the past few months all from various docs – i checked his central profile cuz i’m just that stupid). apparently he couldn’t find any pharmacy that had his meds in stock, or a pharmacist with STUPID tattoo’d to his/her forehead in all of 2 states, so he expected me to fill them instead. needless to say i was fresh out of the mix, wished the guy a Merry Fu**** X-mas and hung up..joy to the world

seriously, ken (or most likely drug abuser bitterly burned by a pharmacist), you have some limited vocabulary. The same 5 words repeated over and over do not equal emphasis of a point, but of the fact that you obviously don’t have that “smug college degree.” If you had any clue as to what a pharmacist does, and how they actually make life so much easier and quality much better for so many of their patients (the people who aren’t out for cII-III fun), you would be able to make a more educated post. However, there is no need to defend against your post, because any person with even slight knowledge of any pharmaceutical career will realize that you do not, and therefore you lost all credibility for critiquing this doctoral profession.
At least the retail pharmacists out there don

Ken is a perfect example of why compliance with Lithium/Depakote should take priority over Vicodin/Soma/speed. But I digress. I hate the holidays for the same reason. Especially working at a hospital in a town that makes “liberal” a four-letter word. Where we are expected to drop all of our 200-plus acute care patients (being a larger percent of NICU/ICU at this time of year) and fill, urgently mind you, what are always 99.9% Vicodin/Percocet for “homeless”, which makes it free. Not to mention there is always an excuse for why the patient cannot get themselves to the 24 hour pharmacy 5 miles away although they got themselves to the ER just fine. What makes this worse are the damn enabling physicians who, literally, schoolyard bully us into dropping everything (patient about to code in ICU/new septic guy next door/ID calling for dosing/ADM problem on line 2/new NICU patient) to filling a freebie NOW. All to fuel their egocentric “bleeding-heart”, “save-the-world” agenda, but ironically, the stroke patient that arrives there doesn’t get the same “bleeding-heart” dilligence. Management turns a blind eye and sides, and we are left to fend for ourselves, which results in me being the “bad-cop” because I actually stand my ground and define my terms. BTW, I have worked in other hospitals where I and the staff have had an excellent relationship with the ER physicians and staff where we were each other’s “right-hand”. Happy Holidays, indeed, where we strive to give a little more in times of need only to give the selfish and greedy more of which to take.

Ken,
I’m sure TAP will get around to saying it, but you are not the first one to have your sentiments. You will not be the last. Nobody forced you to read the blog, and nobody is forcing you to use TAP for your prescription needs. You commenting and complaining will not cause TAP to stop thinking about addicts the way he does, nor will it cause the DEA to stop monitoring his dispensing patterns and potentially take his job away from him at the drop of a hat.
Don’t like it? Write your senator, write your congressman, run for office and change the law – but you can’t make anyone change but yourself. If you don’t like TAP’s blog, might I suggest the Comic’s Curmudgeon at http://www.joshreads.com ? Josh isn’t a pharmacist, but he’s pretty funny and won’t deny you your meds.
Oh, and TAP went to school for a daaaamn long time to be able to do what he does. If you think he’s not doing it well, I’d encourage you to apply to pharmacy school and try standing at the counter for a 12 hour shift. You try reading doctor’s handwriting. You try understanding doctor’s non-english speaking staff. You try dealing with Medco, home of the Medco Pharmacy Helpdesk. And God help you, try dealing with the public who wants free *everything* (and they do).
What I’m saying is, if you don’t like how someone is doing his or her job, do it yourself, and then you don’t have to deal with him or her.

Hey there Ken, this is your doctor speaking. Remember when I told you that you had schizophrenia and to take your medications? Well, I think you should go see your pharmacist and start taking your medications because you are seriously going schizo on us. thanks pal

“I stumbled upon this piece of shit blog, obviously written by a piece of human shit ‘pharmacist’, who is apparently ‘angry’…Peace out douche bag. Maybe you strike up a conversation with coke machine in the hall. I think you two would have a lot in common.
You fucking loser.”
Well, that about covers the fly-by.

With regard to Ken,
Isn’t it funny how only the posts that talk about these dregs of society bring out the most incoherent responses. Methinks, Ken has been turned away by one too many pharmacist this holiday season as they could see through his bullshit.

I think we should take a moment to thank “Ken” here for enlightening us with the missive above. You see, Ken is special:
He’s the only self-serving Republicunt I’ve ever seen attempt to rip another ‘Net user apart with passable grammar *and* access to a couple of pages of a thesaurus. Or did you learn “paternalistic” and those other $5.00 words you abused so soundly above from your ‘Word of the Day’ calendar this year?

Ken you have tons to write, but repeating yourself over and over and using the same 6 words does not help you. As for patients, everyone who walks through my door is a patient. I provide healthcare and I work the the physicians to get you healthy…you are therefore a patient. And ask the multiple people that we have saved from drug interactions and wrong meds etc…ask them if they are patients?
Grow up and get on your meds…you should be better

Ken has a point.People go to a pharmacist because they have no choice.Ask yourself would the profession even exist if not mandated by law?I doubt it now although it did many years ago.You say we provide a valuable service but if this is true why do we have to throw people in jail who do not want to use it?Also spare me the paternalistic bullshit that people are too stupid to think for themselves.You may be a pharmacist but your not my fucking mother.

I would like to commend Ken for his attempt at ridiculing pharmacists, the “profession,” and the general god-complex of pharmacy staff in general. I agree with most of it to an extent.
You had it at first buddy, but then you started rambling and repeating the same thing.
Ken, it would have played out a lot better for ya if you had stopped writing half way through and revised it a couple dozen times.
That shit was beautiful man, and I was laughing my ass all the way to the neighborhood WAG drive-thru to terrorize my fellow suckers in the world of pharmacy by asking for a Fleets enema, a package of raisinetes, and a pepsi until I read the word superfluous about the fourth time around.
Still, it was some pretty good shit.

Ha, laugh out loud. Indeed.
Utterly predictable that you pack of contemptuous human vending machines would immediately smear me as an ‘addict’ of painkillers, and also throw in some horrific, ugly, lowball psychiatric smears.
Of course, I knew you all had it in you, it’s always just below the surface. You hate your lives. Contempt for the community you vend drugs to.
Of course, overt racism and sexism is out, but complete and utter dehumanization of the mentally ill is completely fine for you fine, fine upstanding ‘healthcare professionals’.
I’m not an addict, nor any of your other smears, I don’t take any pharmaceuticals, have no need, and I’m only young, so when and if I do see the need to take any drug, it will be in 30-50 years when you’ve really been replaced by vending machines. A good vending machine should always shut the fuck up and spit out the goods.
As far as my repeated reiteration of the superfluousness and paternalistic nature of your bullshit ‘profession’, I find it amusing and helpful that you found my prose becoming superfluous in itself, it serves to remind the reader just how grating the superfluous things in this life really are, just how grating it is that this bullshit ‘profession’, this hangover from a bygone era really gets.
Of course, given I have no respect for you at all, why would I bother to ‘revise’ a single thing I wrote?
I’m happy you didn’t enjoy my truths. I didn’t enjoy the glimpse into the heartless soulless, destructive malignancy that is the personality of someone who has thrown his or her life away by becoming a human vending machine. Think of it as payback for your offensive presence not only in the world, but online and in my google results.
As far as ‘going to the trouble’ of reading two months worth of posts, they are all right there on the main page, and I read text in a lightning fast way, just me, just lots of practice.
So, if you want to attack the ‘lithium’ or ‘vicodin’ I am supposedly on, or the thesaurus I supposedly used, and completely neglect to answer for your unwarranted human vending machine middleman status, accuse me of not being college educated, go right ahead, you can’t diminish my already appalled view of you people no matter how hard you attempt to rally and ‘dispense’ to me some supposedly hard hitting bullshit ad hominem barking.
You want to talk about ‘repeating the same thing over and over’ try reading this pathetic blog. Every post is just a malignant smear on the people that the blogger gouges a living from.
“lost all credibility for critiquing this doctoral profession”
Haha, doctoral profession, that’s a laugh coming from a human vending machine, try ‘Dr. Pepper’.
You know what, claiming you ‘studied for a long, long time’ doesn’t impress me at all. Your pharmacist degree is nothing but a big old ‘barrier to entry’ for your trade union tenure protected status as state drug controllers…
Nobody elected you to fight a moral panic war on feel good chemicals consenting adults in possession of a ‘ticket to ride’ come at you for, paying customers no less. As far as ‘dangerous drug interactions’ go, a doctor writing the script is responsible for drug choice, along with the consumer, and a simple computer program could cross match that shit, you’re again, superfluous, in the truest sense of the word.
You don’t make the drugs, don’t design and invent, test the drugs, you walk to a shelf and put a fucking sticker on it, like a fucking dickhead with a price gun at Wal Mart, nothing more.
Your mercantile attitude of quantity over everything else was all too evident on all your blogs before I made my comments. It’s all there for the world to see, no erasing it.
I stand by my cardinal conclusion, which will always be this… that a vending machine could do your job.
Don’t try to deny it, just keep labelling me a drug addict, or mentally ill, or non college educated, or whatever large portion of humanity you consider yourself to be above in your delusional world of human vending machine online glad handing.
Interesting you’re so quick to label, must be all that ‘labeling’ you do all day with stickers and bottles and boxes… you’re like a labeling machine too I guess. Like to label boxes, and human beings. Label goes here… like some retard in a sheltered workshop, some art therapy retard.
I was right, you people are pathetic, and you’ve shown me how low down and objectionable, prejudiced, you really are in your pathetic ad hominem responses today.
Your qualifications are just a barrier to entry into a cushy state mandated middleman position, public servants, your presence at work today is nothing but a barrier to entry for citizens attempting to access boxed products you played no part in creating, NOR in product selection, a key point, you’re just charging a toll for us to pass through your gang territory, simple as that, simple as coins into a slot, pay for play, nothing more.
You don’t have patients at all. As you make clear on your blogs, you have fuckheads which you want to take their shit and get the fuck out, no small talk, just get the fuck out and let me collect some more tolls from the next fucker in line… that’s your attitude, you’ve shown it, the last three years of blog posts show it, and you’re clearly nothing but human waste… and you give evidence for people to draw that conclusion too, unlike your unevidenced ad hominem attacks on me and the mentally ill you so despise and dehumanize, like some low down throwback racist, in your full glory noted above.
It was fun to speak some home truths to you losers, and to bookmark this fucking blog and come on back 24 hours later and have a laugh at each of your expense. I thank you for that. What do I get out of this? Apart from the lols, I get to confirm suspicions i’ve always had that you’re horrid, superfluous parasites, with utterly dismal outlooks on life and humanity. An interesting sociological phenomenon in the annals of worthless ways to contribute to the world and EARN a living.
I want your shitty blog off of my screen now, so I’m closing this tab, and moving on. I won’t be back, but I assume you’ll smear and label me with some more attacks while ignoring the true crux of your failed and pointless career direction, like all true fanatics, you’re too heavily invested in it all to turn back now, you’ll go on, congratulate yourselves on your hate for those who pass by your little pathetic gang territory shelving and countertops, convincing yourselves daily you’re oh so necessary in spite of gaping holes in your reasoning, you’re all very funny and sad people, human vending machines, wow, what a fuck up, what a career choice. Man! (exhales) What a waste of your one throw of the dice here on the blue marble huh?
Again, slip a spinal disc from standing around like a fuck head taking boxes off shelves and placing name stickers on them dick heads. You’re angry pharmacists, what a thing to be, both pathetic, and unhappy, angry, you made your beds, it’s highly gratifying to see you so angry and unfulfilled. Tell me, what kind of a retard grows up wanting to be a monkey getting things off shelves and ‘dispensing’ them? Hahahah hilarously fucked up.
I just LOVE how some poster replied to my comment with something like ‘You try reading doctors’ handwriting’… that really says it all right there doesn’t it?
“I provide healthcare and I work (sic) the the physicians to get you healthy…you are therefore a patient.”
Hahaha ‘care’…. your blogs show you clearly don’t care. You don’t. You provide nothing more than a physician with a heap of shelving filled with drugs in his office could provide, you hand me a box you fuck head. You’re like the robot arm in Back to the Future feeding dog food to the dog when Doc Brown is away.
Why do I get the sense all the bank tellers fired after the rise of the ATM used to tell themselves how important the ‘customer care’ they provided was? Or the auto factory welders who had such pride of workmanship who are now replaced by a robot welding arm?
“You” “get me healthy”… hahahah. I suppose my butcher is in a ‘working partnership with the cow to provide a protein delivery system’ huh?
Fuck heads. What a dismal, dismal ‘career’, careening into neurotic and visceral ‘anger’ one name sticker label after another, one box off the shelf after another, one sterile, white, fluorescent lighting mass of meaningless days, swapping your god given hours for your little cut of our forced customerhood, you parasites… you nothings. You pathetic, sterile, sad, fucking human tragicomedy losers.
Die in an armed drug hold up. Seriously. I’d jack off to the online news article and spunk all over my laptop if I read one of your meaningless lives was snuffed out.
I must close this browser tab and return to something more pressing now, but if you do see me at your counter, I’ll be the one with the blank thousand yard stare understanding I’m only talking to an input/output vending machine, no humanity offered, none required. Die.

Ken, if you find yourself once again rubbing one out to the pleasure you get from your own posts, why don’t you be a doll and register the angryantipharmacist.com bullshit blog? It would be a great way to distract you from whatever bullshit life you ended up with. By the way, who the fuck are you? If you knew any better, you’d have a basic understanding of what pharmacists know, the things they deal with, and where else they practice. But as an imbecile you’re unlikely to educate yourself. This blogger provides a decent source of entertainment for those who like a little bit of dark humor in their day. So, fuck yourself.

Drew – Yea let’s just let people walk into a store and grab a 30-pack of coumadin 2mg. That would be a hoot. And then they’d bleed out inside and die b/c they “thought they needed it”. I wouldn’t let Joe Public operate on me – I want Dr. Surgeon. I wouldn’t want Jane Cashier counseling me on medications – I want Mr. or Ms. Pharmacist. Not Dr. Doctor – Mr. or Ms. Pharmacist knows my medications and knows what’s going to interact and will catch it. I’ve heard stories of pts. w/ high blood pressure being told to take sudafed products for their head cold and it’s not a good idea.
One could make the same argument for the police – they only exist b/c the government pays for it to enforce the laws, why not let people police themselves too?
Your pharmacist is a knowledgeable medical professional – s/he is just abused a lot by the public who thinks s/he’s the store manager.

Wow, not a Pharmacist, but good friends with three of them. This blog is a trip! Sorry u guys have to put up with our crap. The Health-care system is a bit intimidating, especially if you are a pain management patient. I read somewhere that, “to have pain is to have certainty. To hear of anothers pain is to have doubt”. I can only imagine the crap you all have to put up with. Luckily, I grew up with my pharmacists (three generation, soda shop store:) Also, I have enough metal plates/screws/wires/and pins to get nervous on the Radiology floor 🙂 It is always good to get a glimpse of what it’s like “on the other side of the counter”. Keep up the awesome posts. Good place to let off steam!!! I will not call in anything in Dec 😉 good evening to all!

Of course if you ignore state & federal laws, DEA regulations, CDC guidelines, and FDA warnings then go ahead with your pill popping without our paternalistic bullcrap.
Please ignore our comments on how to take meds that make you puke your guts out, that eating certain foods while on medications will potentially maim or kill you (or render the med ineffective if you’re lucky!), or that an addiction is not a good thing (whoops, too late!).
Who cares of what OD is. The feeling of euphoria is worth a relaxed diaphragm as you slowly asphyxiate. Of course the paramedics will have to bring you back as a vegetable while you choke and spew vomit from the withdrawal.
As long as you own up to YOUR stupidity (pfft…like that ever happens). Hope you like life without a kidney or your cirrotic-riddled liver.
Happy Holidays!

Hahahahahaha Ken. What a tool. Yep, I’m a pharmacist as well and I happen to agree with 99.9% of what TAP writes about. Did I mention that you’re a tool? Yes, that’ll be the word I repeat over and over and over. Tool, tool, tool. You obviosly have no idea what the profession involves so STFU.
Tool.

Google Account, you have Internet access but you can’t afford to fill a Vicodin prescription? I think you’re making it up because that’s one of the cheapest drugs around – if you purchase it generically.
And I think Ken needs a hobby.
Never mind, he appears to have found one.
How about a JOB?

I love Ken! I have been reading here for a long time now and I guess I keep coming back because it’s really hard to believe anyone can hate humanity as much as TAP does.
I have waited a long time to read someone rip him in the way Ken has done.
All you people who think TAP is so funny and so smart. You know who you are. The ones who come here daily and encourage him and his behavior. Will you still be proud of yourself when this human time bomb goes to work one day and shoots up a group of innocent people? There is no one more psycho and disgruntled than TAP. You people couldn’t care less about him. If you did you would try to help him with his displaced anger, instead of being the enablers that you are. I hope when you read about him in the newspaper one day, you take your share of the guilt.

It seems that Ken must have only made to about the 7th grade with his little 4 letter word usage. I agree with one of the previous posts….He must have got turned away on his Vicodin Script. He is just jealous of other people actually having a degree and intelligence.

Paternalistic fucking… To fuck in the manner of a kindly, but intrusive father… I suppose the superfluous would involve the fact that daddy fucked him a few too many times.
I suppose in ken’s deluded world, vending machines are apparently able to read the chicken scratches that Doctors call handwriting. Even though present vending machines have trouble taking my dollar bill. Not to mention the sheer quantity of drugs on the market. The vending machine would have to be the size of a small warehouse to even begin to house the number of medications on the market.
However, if we want to talk about superfluous jobs. What about the asshats at McDonalds who stand between me and my god-given right to clog my arteries with their greaseball burgers? Those paternalistic fucking vending machines. Fuck fuck paternalistic Superfluous fucking vending machines all night long.
Or, how about the car dealers, who stand between me and my god given right to have a new car whenever I want it. No one elected them. Those paternalistic paternalists with their paternalistic paternal fucking of paternal people. SUPERFLUOUS!
Or what about bank tellers? Standing in the way of my obtaining enormous amounts of money that my government is printing every day for my consumption! Who elected them superfluously? The Paternalistic fuckers with paternalistic superfluosity, that’s who!
**does a quick count**
Shit, I haven’t said Superfluous Fuck, or Paternalistic nearly enough… Nor have I mentioned Monkeys or Vending machines enough…
Damn.
Monkey vending machines would be pretty fucking awesome. Put in the money, and get a monkey. How cool would that be? I wonder if the monkey would come with drugs? And if so, would that make him the Drug Monkey?
As far as the actual post about Soma and Vicodin and the like, it is so sad but true. People come to the pharmacies and insist on getting drugs way too early. But of course, it is only because we in the pharmacy are paternalistic superfluous fucking vending machine monkeys, that we give a damn that a patient has gone through their 30 day supply of Xanax in 2 days. Or that Ms. Smith has managed to flush her vicodin down the toilet for the third time this week. Or even that Mr. Vasquez has decided on his own, and with no professional advice, to start taking 4 vicodin at a time, because his pain is “really kinda bad”.
And then the jackasses who come to the pharmacy counter after a week, claiming they are going to be out of town for a few days, and thus need early fills on all their narcs. I’ve come to the conclusion that they all get together at a massive addict’s party, and dump all their narcs into a giant punch bowl, and eat them like fucking M&Ms.
I’d right more, but sadly, I need to go put on my superfluous paternalistic vending machine outfit, and make sure the people at the hospital live to see another day… Yeah… Ken, When you find a vending machine that can compound IV medications, lemme know… I could use a little more free time.

Sorry for my vehemnet behavior over the past few days. I am back on my xanax/vicodin/soma coctail (all brand since i KNOW generics dont work) and am once again the flaming homosexual i love to dance around and be!!!

AAaaaahhhh, Ken, Ken, Ken. Why don’t you call up all your friends and family and tell them to boycot the government conspiracy to make pharmacists rich at the expense of the general public. Everyone should just order their meds online. Cut out the middle man. Who cares if the ‘middle man’ is some guy who spends all day mixing talc, paint, rat poison, and whatever the fuck he can get his hands on to press out fake tablets with the exact same color and imprint to sell to the Viagra loving American public. Don’t believe me? PBS did a quite informative documentary on the subject.
Don’t want Viagra? (methinks you might need it. your writing reeks of little penis syndrome). Let’s just say grandma just found out she has cancer. The doctor prescribes Doxorubicin 50 mg/m2 and Cyclophosphamide 600 mg/m2 every 3 weeks x 4 cycles. You are more than welcome to come into my pharmacy and grab a box off the shelf of my pharmacy in the middle of the doctor’s office and give those to grandma yourself. I’ll even give you the benefit of the doubt that a nurse has the IV line started and is ready to start grandma on her life saving treatment.
What? No box?? OK. Found a box in the refrigerator that says Adriamycin with a vial of powder in it. How do I get it into grandma’s IV?? And how much? Damn! Ok, I looked it up on the internet, but it says it’s toxic and ‘proper cytotoxic handling procedures are required’. WTF does that mean?? Well, it’s on the internet, so it can’t be THAT complicated. Who cares if I splatter it all over myself and give grandma an infection because I didn’t know how to keep it sterile before it went into her veins. And who gives a shit if I exposed myself to cancer by splattering the medicine all over myself. It’s for the common good, right?
Ok, found a box of Cytoxan on the regular shelf. I just stick a sticker on it with grandma’s name, right?? Hmmmmmm, the nurse doesn’t like that. The doctor doesn’t like that either. Is that the same as Cyclophosphamide?? It has powder, too!! How do I get that into grandma’s veins? Look it up on the internet. Give grandma another infection, and splatter myself with even more toxic compounds. After all, I do this every day for lot’s of ‘patients’. I don’t give a fuck if I expose myself and everyone else in the building to toxic chemicals over and over again. I’m driving off in my Beemer!!
What’s that you say? We lost $500,000 in unpaid chemo bills this year because we didn’t look up on the internet (hahahahhaha) why researchers have found that this cutting edge cancer therapy actually works? Wow, those insurance companies are so selfish that they don’t just pay for whatever box I grab off the shelf and slap a sticker on. I mean, the doctor prescribed it. Pharmacists don’t document every bit of that cutting edge therapy they gave to every one of the patients across the country and world they treated at their clinic. We should just cut out the middle man and take all those doctor’s words for it, right?
Sneer if you want, but most of us would give our left nut (or fallopian tube) to be rid of all the controlled substances so that we don’t have to be the Vicodin and Soma police. Perhaps we should just centralize all robotic dispensing of controlled substances at a vending machine. Who cares if the doctor prescribes Fentanyl 75 mcg/hr patch to start grandma instead of 25 mcg/hr therapy? She OD’s and dies. Oh well. No pharmacist involved there. Guess you will have to sue that doctor. Isn’t that better than having a pharmacist call the doctor ahead of time & ask if maybe he didn’t want to start with 25 mcg/hr patch? You wouldn’t be feeding the pharmico-industrial complex.
Medicine is complicated. If you could learn everything you needed to know on the internet, you would have no need for hospitals, doctors, nurses, xray techs, respiratory techs, social workers, occupational therapists, physical therapists, lab technicians or pathologists (requires an old fashioned MD to look through a microscope!!), radiologists, surgeons (don’t forget many have a nurse that is literally their right hand ‘man’), psychiatrists, endocrinologists, oncologists, radiation oncologist, anesthesiologists, etc, etc, etc, specialist infineetum (sp?).
And to sell you a clue: We HATE it when Big Pharma comes up with a unique FDA slight of hand to come up with nothing new, but ‘earn’ an FDA patent to ‘educate’ your doctor that their ‘new’ drug is the best thing since sliced bread.
Please Ken, tell me what is the difference between Celexa and Lexapro? And why did one cost a LOT more than the other before they both went generic? It’s aaaaallll on the internet.
If you can tell me, I might have to give you a special pharmacist favor. Wink, wink 😉 😉

Why would you guys waste your energy with Ken? He’s just a poor soul without much education. If anything, educate him. As a med student, i surely appreciate what pharmacists can offer. Medical care is just a service. If they dont like it, take it elsewhere. You know what you can do and have to do. I dont see the need to defend pharmacy as a profession.

wow, ken using that logic why don’t you set up your lawn chair in mallencrodt’s lobby and get rid of all the middle men…….better yet move right to Kabul. stop wasting our time with dribble and go ahead…..get your semi-auto and move on. the freedom fighters are waiting for you…….freedom from government intervention, freedom of information, protection from the FDA, go ahead….. the poppy fields are waiting for a hero like you to liberate them…..leave us the fuck alone…….there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.

I only WISH I could be more like a vending machine! Only accept crisp new bills, then dispense nothing at all!
Ken, with your attitude, you are destined to die of a drug interaction – have fun with that.
Regarding the Vicodin and Soma holiday phenomenon, it isn’t as big as the Percocet and Adderall phenomenon in my pharmacy. Those two took up most of my day on Christmas Eve…

WOW
Ken’s comments were INTENSE
I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.
Dude this is why I decided to go to med school.
My experience in retail pharmacy (as a tech) was just awful.
Thanks TAP… I would’ve made a huge mistake.
Not that medicine is much better but I’ll find some specialty where I don’t have to deal with crazy fuck-wits all day.
If not I’ll go sell out and be a college professor.
I love you pharmacists, you have no idea how much respect I have for you. I’m glad I’m not going to be going through med. school and residency without the knowledge of what pharmacists put up with on my behalf.

Why is it OK to drink vodka recreationally (since that’s its only purpose anyway) but not take prescription drugs recreationally? I’m not condoning either of the two but neither is worse for your health than the other, save the acetaminophen content in combination medications. In fact, opiates have little effect upon the liver whereas alcohol has a significantly larger hepatic impact. I’m just throwing this out there… All of the “angry pharmacists” are mentioning the use of alcohol to dilute their daily troubles when perhaps their clients (I don’t prefer repeating the term “patients” after the way that angry pharmacists are talking about them) are merely trying to escape similar troubles in their own lives with the use of their prescribed drug. One might say that one is illegal and one isn’t but if there really isn’t a difference, then that says a lot about that “laws” that we secondarily enforce and if one law is not necessarily full of integrity, then perhaps many of the other laws that pharmacists fall back on as excuses for their pessimistic and critical behavior are fallible as well.

As I said, I’m not condoning the abuse of any substance. I’m now 20 years old and I’ve been on hydrocodone for a few years now to treat severe pain from peripheral neuropathy. In all of this time, I’m still on a 5 mg dose three times a day as I was from the beginning because I’ve taken measures to prevent the buildup of any tolerance by using therapeutic doses of dextromethorphan with each dose, as NMDA-agonists have been proven to reduce tolerance, and taking week-long painful breaks of no medicine to allow myself to go through mild withdrawals to reset tolerance levels.

Now I’m sure that considering my age and regular hydrocodone prescriptions, I’m a pharmacist’s and DEA agent’s wet dream, but I assure you, my usage of this life-changing opiate has been used for only therapeutic purposes. I got about 25 collective hours of sleep in four months before I began hydrocodone therapy with my neurologist. Although I have had a few looks from pharmacists, I have yet to be denied medication or a refill for any reason but if that day ever comes, I assure you I will take right to the streets to obtain what I need to have a pain free life illicitly.

“Haha, doctoral profession, that’s a laugh coming from a human vending machine, try ‘Dr. Pepper’.
You know what, claiming you ‘studied for a long, long time’ doesn’t impress me at all. Your pharmacist degree is nothing but a big old ‘barrier to entry’ for your trade union tenure protected status as state drug controllers…
Nobody elected you to fight a moral panic war on feel good chemicals consenting adults in possession of a ‘ticket to ride’ come at you for, paying customers no less. As far as ‘dangerous drug interactions’ go, a doctor writing the script is responsible for drug choice, along with the consumer, and a simple computer program could cross match that shit, you’re again, superfluous, in the truest sense of the word.
You don’t make the drugs, don’t design and invent, test the drugs, you walk to a shelf and put a fucking sticker on it, like a fucking dickhead with a price gun at Wal Mart, nothing more.”
….oh dear god ken, you really have no idea what a pharmacist is/does. Pharmacists are CHEMISTS who MAKE DRUGS (DESIGN, INVENT) and TEST drugs. In most places I’ve worked, its the pharmacy technician doing the labeling and selling of the medication. This is because the pharmacist is too busy answering questions, making drug recommendations, calling doctors when they prescribe something that doesn’t exist or will kill their patient at the levels ordered, etc., etc., etc. You want to be able to make an educated post about how a pharmacy is run? Go work in one for a few months.

Ken, here’s a hint to help you with the chemotherapy queen –
Celexa (Citalopram) and Lexapro (Escitalopram) are the same thing, essentially. Celexa is a racemic mixture of R and S isomers of citalopram, whereas Lexapro is only the S isomer. Oh, and they have slightly different acid-salt packages, just to keep things interesting. What about the R isomer? Forest Laboratories would like you to think that it slightly inhibits the effects of the S isomer so you spend $$$ on brand Lexapro instead of generic citalopram, but many insurance companies have wised-up on the differences between these two medications and will force the patient to try 2 generics (your doctor’s choice from citalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, paroxetine, or sertraline) before they will cover Lexapro.
Anyhow, the only reason I know all this was because I passed organic chemistry and biochemistry and teched at a pharmacy for a while. The pharmacists are the gurus – they passed medchem! Sure, I learned the mechanism for SSRIs in psych 101, but I couldn’t tell you why coumadin is an effective anticoagulant, or why it is dangerous to switch from synthroid to levothyroxine. And I swear to you, if your pharmacist were a vending machine, that vending machine would switch you over to generic each time. I know this b/c that’s what the gods in the CVS computers try to do to you each time you refill that coumadin or that synthroid.

I know you are reading this, Ken. Your incessant desire to close the browser tab has been overpowered by the weakness of the flesh. Resistance is futile. Give in to your anger. There is no turning back now. Release your hatred upon the much awaited TAP response. Surrender to the Dark Side!!!

Hey TAP, great post as always….hugs. I know that you could completely dazzle Ken with your pharmacotherapeutic knowledge if you didn’t have to deal with shit-sucking motherfuckers like him all day long. oops, sorry, I said a bad word.
chemoqueenrph…love your reply. Please tell me you have a blog.

Wow, I am so glad that I spent the last 9 years of my life in school so that I could become a human vending machine. I think Ken is a little sore because he just found out that *gasp* pharmacists make a shit load of money for “labeling” a vial/box/etc as he calls it. Like so many of you I hope he is facing that vending machine in 30 years waiting for his cipro to pop out for his prostatitis meanwhile later taking warfarin for DVT prophylaxis. Yeah buddy look those up and see what you get. You think you might bleed much?
Anyway, bottom line is working with the public is very difficult. No matter what the job. I firmly believe that everyone should have to work dealing with the public at least once in their lifetime. All we ask for is a little respect. Don’t walk in there and try to tell me how to do my job, it is my neck and license on the line each and everyday. If you think you can do it any better, take that 1 in 12 shot of getting into pharmacy school after years of chemistry, physics, biology, calculus,etc etc. Then endure 4 more years of more pure hell, sit for your board exam and finally, just finally have the opportunity to stand on your feet for 12 hours a day filling 500+ prescriptions and everyone wanting it “right now”. Step right on up….I would like to truly see how you and your vulgar language could handle working with the public. You would not last a day.
BTW, TAP keep it up. You always bring a smile to my face after a long day.

To angry Ken. Do the world a favor and just kill yourself. What do you do that constitutes a real job? I would like to know. By the way, you are ruining my name by looking like such an asshole on this blog. Obviously you don’t have a job since you have so much free time to rant and rave on here. Or maybe because it’s that you don’t have any friends or family that can fucking put up with you. Let me guess here. You are 5’2″, have never seen a naked woman and masturbate to world of warcraft or whatever gay online shit is cool these days. Your anger makes me think of short man syndrome. You sound so tough and intimidating.
What do you have a degree in that makes you so intelligent? Or is college just another government conspiracy? Another middle-man preventing you from happiness? If I ever had the pleasure of meeting you in public, I would donate my paycheck to several people so they could hold you down while I take a shit on your face. You speak shit, so you shouldn’t mind eating it. I just hope you die. Later Ken.

Allow me to summarize Ken’s lunacy for those who fell asleep less than halfway through his mindless tirade:
Superfluous paternalistic fucking shit TAP hurt my itty bitty feewings fuckity fuck GIMME MA VICO-DANS I DON’T NEED AN RX I ARE SMARTER THAN PHARMACISTS AND DOCTORS AND I BOUGHT ME A THESAURUS AND THE GOVERNMENT IS WATCHING YOOOUUUU!!!!!1!!!ONE!!!ELEVENTY!!!1!!
Oh, and, uh, fuck.
The End.

Ken,
Obviously you have been turned away early refills on your narcs for the above reasons tap lists. Oh, those mean pharmacists… the gatekeepers between the addict and the drug!! I hear the baby crying!!!! Don’t give up, try multiple pharmacies, different cities, the internet, more docs…. work hard and you will get your narcs!! Oh that is right, you have probably never worked in your life!! No wonder you hate us pharmacists.
I have often said I would respect you scumbags more if you simply came to the counter and said ” I am addicted to my narcs, I took my whole bottle and need more” rather then coming up with lame excuse after lame excuse. And mind you.. it is only the narcs this happens with.. no one is begging for early fills on there premarin or metoprolol or for the uneducated narc addicts like ken, hormones or blood pressure meds. And sadly you guys are the same scumbags that the working tax payers support since you consider medicaid insurance!!!! So my advice is get a job, get your self cleaned up, get a pysch evaluation and try to contribute to society…. with the right meds, you will love what pharmacy could do for you.

Ken,
I promised myself I would not waste more than a few lines on your sorry ass. Let me just ask one question, what do you do for a living (I’m guessing by the massive amount of time and energy your posts have probably taken you that you are not a fortune-500 CEO)…do you even have the balls to tell me? I’d be willing to bet you are a vending machine repair man in need of more work. Do the world a favor, get an education, get a life, and get a vasectomy…there’s already an overabudance of ignorant assholes, and we certainly don’t need you adding to the surplus.

Sorry Ken,
One more thing, pharmacists are licensed professionals, not trade union workers. Not that I need to correct your obvious dearth of knowledge.
Now no more responses from me until I learn what you do for a living, and selling vicodin to the neighbors is NOT a job!

Sorry Ken,
One more thing, pharmacists are licensed professionals, not trade union workers. Not that I need to correct your obvious dearth of knowledge.
Now no more responses from me until I learn what you do for a living, and selling vicodin to the neighbors is NOT a job!

I don’t doubt this Ken fellow spent at least 2 hours typing up each of those long rants. Now that is dedication! Imagine if such an effort were put into something useful and meaningful. I’d say that would be quite an achievement! (I must add that gaining 15 minutes of web page fame is HARDLY an achievement)
It shocks and saddens me at how much hatred exists in this world, only increased by the ability to speak anonymously online. At least our good friend TAP gives us the opportunity to laugh at it’s expense. He simply takes stereotypes that we pharmacy people can relate to and writes them into hilarious scenarios! This is exactly what the famous comedians of today do!
However, I found the hateful post by Ken not in the least bit funny. No play on words, no wit nor cleverness in his writing. Oh why? Could you not have come up with something better?? His writing only made me feel pity.
Pity and hatred, two emotions that never benefit the host. Sometimes I think being an emotionless vending machine robot arm wouldn’t be for the worse.

Okay, one thing we need to point out to Ken is that all of these horrible patients are a very small percentage of our patient population, but they stand out the most.
We have tons of patients that make our lives great and enjoy our jobs, we need places like TAP so we can vent about all the crazies (read: you).

Where is K-k-k-Ken? That guy was FUNNY! As a pharmacist for over 30 years I couldn’t agree with him MORE! Our “profession” is bullshit. Always has been and always will be. This quote from Ken sums it all up:
“You don’t make the drugs, don’t design and invent, test the drugs, you walk to a shelf and put a fucking sticker on it, like a fucking dickhead with a price gun at Wal Mart, nothing more….your presence at work today is nothing but a barrier to entry for citizens attempting to access boxed products you played no part in creating, NOR in product selection, a key point, you’re just charging a toll for us to pass through your gang territory, simple as that, simple as coins into a slot, pay for play, nothing more.”
OK sometimes we do more than that but they are few and far between. 99% of the time we do exactly that, and THAT, my fellow pharmacists, is BULLSHIT for a profession.
Happy New Year!

TAP:
I share your view of the holidays. They suck. And your comment, “add on a good dose of holiday cheer and you have a prescription for a bottle of Jack and a nebulizer treatment of 00 buckshot” is right on the money, as usual.
Ken:
I can guarantee you’ll never find me standing behind a counter, explaining to some walking missed abortion why they’re not going to get their narcotics early. Why? Because I’d get fired the first day for telling some whiney-assed addict to fuck off. I don’t tolerate fools gladly. How TAP and associates do it day after day without drop-kicking some deserving jackass out into the middle of traffic, is beyond me.
Vending machines replace pharmacists? Yeah, right. I took my son to the E.R. today, and had to get his prescriptions filled by a machine because this is one of the three days a year that my pharmacist is unavailable. (His employer closes the store down for the day or he’d be there, working.) The machine didn’t have what the doc really thought my son needed, so he had to choose another drug. Did I find that reassuring? No. Could we have waited until tomorrow and gotten the better drug at the pharmacy? …Maybe. But chances are good that by morning we would have had to have my son hospitalized, with an ambulance call thrown in if his condition deteriorated sufficiently for him to become hypoxic….
You get your information off the internet? Good luck with that one. KNOW YOUR SOURCE. Don’t believe everything you read on the ‘net – there is a LOT of complete bullshit out there in cyberspace. I prefer to trust a highly educated professional when it comes to my ingesting chemical compounds that could cause permanent organ damage or result in death. You want risk your life and health, go right ahead. But don’t expect me to support you with my tax dollars when you fuck yourself up worse than you apparently are now.
Oh, and Ken? A friendly tip from someone who’s been on a psych ward and is going to be on antidepressants for a long, long time: YOU COULD REALLY USE SOME PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MEDS. Now go away and let the adults talk in peace; you have ceased to be amusing.
Happy new year….

I’ve always had madd respect for Pharmacists b/c of torture I saw my friends go through in college. My worst day in grad school was a walk in the park compared to what Pharmacists go through.
As a non-pharmacist though, I have a little insight into whether or not pharmacists are just vending machines and I have a lot of insight into what Software can and can’t do. My father is an anastheseologist and successful by any objective measure. We have 3 doctors in the family and one PA. The one thing I’ve heard them all say is how much better Pharmacists know drugs than physicians. One can’t be good at everything and it takes a LOT to be a great doctor. So you have to make choices about how you spend your time and keeping up with the latest drugs to the point you know them inside and out doesn’t make the cut. Sure, a good doc will know a lot about drugs, but no way they’ll know them as well as a pharmacist. Trust me on this – Docs are a pretty arrogant bunch (particularly the ones I just mentioned) and for them to give anyone credit, let alone the huge amount of credit they give pharmacists is pretty surprising. You’d never hear a doctor defer to a vending machine like that.
On the software side… Yah, right. See, software is written by people. Some software is written by other software but at some point, a human wrote it. Humans make mistakes. Mistakes in programming == bugs. Bugs == f***ups. That’s not even considering hardware failures. I’m all for software enhancing medicine and pharmacy – but I’d be scared crapless to take anything that could harm me (directly or through an interaction) that didn’t have a HUMAN who knew WTF he/she was doing verify it. If you would trust your life to software, I’d highly encourage you to talk to any 5 random programmers and ask them their opinion. Even if you could get a vending machine and a program to do it – the liability insurance would be quite expensive – so much so, it’d very likely drive prices up on several items. Why? B/c the people writing that stuff and building the machines know that even 5 9’s (99.999%) means something bad given enough volume.
There’s only one thing I’d bitch about in regard to TAP- politics. I know he hates repubs and it’s understandable, but can he stop acting like Dems are notably better 😉

Man do I have a story for you, and you can TOTALLY use it if you choose to. We have our voicemail system for MD’s to call in new scripts on. Of course the message says, “Thank you for calling (local community pharmacy) *then long dramatic pause* Para espanol oprima el numero cinco. For those that don’t speak spanisht aht means “For spanish press number five”. We received the BEST message on it last week! A man called and said the following, “I guess I will have to boycott the services of (local community pharmacy) because when I call I get a foreign tongue, a dirty foreign tongue, shoved down my ear. This is America and I don’t speak this language, espatchol. At least at (other community pharmacy) they offer an option for spanish speakers to press another button for their language. (Then he proceeds to give the freakin example, like he is the automated message line) and so as soon as you adopt such a policy, so I don’t have a filthy foreign tongue shoved in my ear when I call, maybe I will consider bringing my business back to your pharmacy.”
First of all I speak a few languages, but when I signed up for them I never saw espatchol on the list. Second of all, I am caucasian, but I have a tolerance for people of other races, as long as they are doing for themselves. I know that there are stereotypes for all races, and I see it in my daily work life. BUT to have such horrible ignorance for other races and publicly verbalizing your racist reviews in a freaking phone message is CRAZY. Especially when after listening to our message at the store it was clear the ONLY way the man got the spanish line was to press the number 5! Maybe he can call us when he didn’t load up on pain killers and booze.
Thought you would enjoy the laugh from this story.

Ken:
For the love of God will you please put down the Ayn Rand book and pick up a thesaurus. If I have to read the words “paternalistic” or “parasitic” again I’m going to stab a libertarian.
Driven on any paved roads lately?

I have a question for you, as far as vicodin is concerned. My sister is a recovering addict. 3 years now. She uses the W pharmacy. She use to get vicodin filled weekly from various ER’s and doctors. Always filled at W, lots of early refills. After she went thru detox, she let her pharmacist know she was a recovering addict, as well as her doctor. She hasn’t gone to the ER for pain meds in 3 years. She recently was hospitalized for a severe migraine, that lasted 3 days. It was dignosed she has a blood clot in her brain, and that’s what triggered the horrific migraines. She now takes Lortab as needed. Fills it at W, not one early refill in 3 years… My question is… is there a way to “win” back a pharmacists trust? So they don’t think your some dude who wants a buzz?? She now maybe gets them filled once a month, and the quanity is low maybe 15-30.

i enjoyed your comments about narcotics and the switch to albuterol hfa’s
and i agree with you
i apologize for my physician peers who make your life more difficult
persinally, i am grateful for the pharmacists in my area who watch my back and care fore my patients

Okay Ken, seriously. What the hell? That was the one of the most bat-shit crazy rants that I’ve ever read. My father has been a pharmacist for more than 30 years now. He works full time at a retail chain, and then he works a part-time job at a hospital pharmacy on top of it all. I never knew what the guy went through each and every day to support his family. Then I got a job as pharmacy tech. and got to see what it was that he was doing all those years and also what he was complaining about. Yeah, there’s tons to bitch about and rightly so. By the end of my shift (most days) I really don’t care if the fat amarican public has their medication (with voucher coupon that you just decided to show me after I rang you up…DUMBASS!) or not.
It’s the one person that says ‘thank you’ that can make a day worth it. It’s also the one person, that would be you Ken, that makes us hate the world of pharmacy even more. Just write a poem and cry yourself to sleep already. Pharmacy isn’t going anywhere. If anything it’s going to just get busier and busier. The baby boomers are starting to get old. The demand for pharamacists is going to sky rocket.
The world of pharmacy is much harder than a dipshit on the outside could possibly imagine. I see it firsthand every day I walk in. The last thing that I worry about are people who think like you Ken. To me, the only reason someone like you exists is so that I can feel better about myself. After all, things could be worse. I could be you. Thankfully I’m not… maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Thanks for showing us all what not to do with our lives Ken. I never mind learning something new at the expense of others. Honestly, this seething ball of hatred sounds kinda like me during my teenage “little bastard” phase. Ah memories… then I grew up.
Stop bitching Ken. If you hate us like you say you do, then the best thing you can do is shut it. You’re only adding fuel to the fire. With every new post like yours, we have more fodder and more things to poke fun at. Wait… if that’s the case then don’t stop bitching Ken. Keep it up. BY GOLLY KEEP IT COMING! POST AGAIN! Please?
Keep fighting the good fight TAP.

Ken,
I love the way you feel when I am inside you, the way the waves of your shitter walls come crashing against the shores of my hungry tool. I love it when you moan and shriek my name as I thoroughly plow you from behind, the superfluous liquids spraying out of your chasm-like anus. I enjoy the paternalistic power I have over you as I am pounding your cute, manly behind. I love watching you gobble up the superfluous semen we blasted on the curtains. By the way, you forgot your lunchbox at home.
Love, Dad.

It’s quite obvious that some of the people who comment here can’t handle admitting that they have a problem. I finally got off of opiate pain pills, after taking them for almost 4 years in extremely high doses from the middle to end. I’ll admit, they started going in my belly for pain, but after a few months I just wanted them. A few months ago, I got myself on Suboxone, and I’m down to a quarter of one a day from 2 a day, though I was prescribed a small dosage of Adderall by my PCP due to the unfortunate side effect of falling asleep driving and everywhere else, but at least I’m not falling asleep anymore. I’ve actually gotten myself on a regular sleeping schedule again and am feeling good. Now if I can only get the corporate office of my job to fix the dental insurance they screwed up during open enrollment…
I don’t see what everyone has such a big problem with pharmacists doing their jobs for. I’ve been at pharmacies during the height of my pill craze with the people I got the pills from (never as stupid as to forge a script or try to lie about one), and believe me, most of the people getting Lortabs, and Percocets, and Roxicets, and OxyContin, and all those other pain pills, are in absolutely no pain whatsoever. They might have been the first time they went to the pain clinic, however after the first month or two of getting 120 10/325 percs, they’re fine. I think many of the addicts here just don’t want to admit they’re addicts, and when the pharmacist does his or her job and doesn’t dole out the pills, the addict has to take it out on them because of the detox they go through.
Even when I was popping the pain pills left and right I never got pissed off at what was said on a blog, Hell, I agreed with it! I knew I had a problem after the pain left and I still wanted the narcs, however when you’re spending all your money on the narcs, it’s hard to get the proper treatment for it (even if it is a bit controversial from what I’ve heard). According to my doctor, I’ll be weaned off of the Suboxone in another week or two, and I’m already going a couple of days at a time, without needing it. Save some money for a change, you who can’t live without the pills, and either get an appointment with a doctor that can prescribe Suboxone, and be serious about it, follow the proper treatment, and learn what it means to have a life again!
AND STOP FUCKING PICKING ON THE PHARMACISTS!
OH YEAH!! ANGRY, MY SITE’S BACK UP!!! RagingServer.com

Why is vicodin such a popular pain med of kvetch on this site as opposed to something with a bit more punch, say, percocet? Vicodin is basically glorified APAP. Don’t docs in CA prescribe percs?
Also it would be interesting to read your thoughts re the recent nation-wide shortage of oxycodone. Pharmacies here in southern FL have been completely out of stock for weeks with no end in sight, causing docs to switch their pts to other meds (such as your pal vicodin), thus causing a shortage of that as well.

Psh, I’m AFRAID of talking to a pharmacist on the phone, because I know they are thinking that I’m an addict to my Vicodin and Lortab. It makes me so mad though in a way because these stupid “high seeking adddicts” want there pills, and it makes it so much more difficult for the ones who have legitamite chronic pain due to a life-long disease.

TAP: Why is it so bad to prefer one generic drug over another? I know you feel they are ”all equal.” When you go into the supermarket, do you purchase store brand frozen pizzas, cereal, etc? I mean, it’s “all the same” as the name brand right?

Drugs are regulated by the FDA to have the same dosage, release mechanisms, etc etc……I doubt the FDA cares if Shop Right Brand Pizza tastes the exact same as Ellio’s, or if ACME’s chunky peanut butter has less chunk than Skippy’s.

you seem to rail against socialized medicine that the government is promoting, yet you vehemently disagree with it. so you basically pick-and-choose what you want to believe and what you dont want to believe from the government. if the goverment is saying there needs to be socialized medicine and has a particular plan to enact, and anything else they promote in the ways of how healthcare should be in this country in their minds, im not quite understanding why/how you disagree with their ideas. you may say you have an intimate knowledge of how the healthcare industry is affecting citizens since you see doctors patients on a regular basis, know how they can/cannot pay for medicine, etc. well, do you have experience with trying different generic drugs of a specific drug, thus being able to use your own experience to disseminate an original idea? i assume you do not. but you choose to make generalizations instead and use ”government data” as your evidence. you may say the govt. is using science to say that all generics are the same, well, they also have equations that say their healthcare plan is appropriate, responsible, and just. why not choose to believe it?

well, get behind what the pharamaceutical-inspired government has to say about healthcare, because they have the GUARANTEES on how itll be so great for everyone. (or so say they say)

Wow! Did you not see the movie sicko? People with insurance get it revoked when they have a serious claim like cancer for ridiculous accusations against them, like they already had it before the insurance because they saw a dermatologist for a pimple. Thats an actual case that was being heard by a panel for medical reform. Anyone who believes all the lies they tell you about socialized medicine should realize the reason they want you to believe in those lies is to scare you into not voting for it while they bet paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by pharmaceutical companies to make laws that screw people even more, like the bill they passed that was supposed to be helping the elderly but makes them pay more for meds instead.
On another note, you self-righteous asshole, you obviously don’t know what it’s like to be in agony every day of your life. There is a serious problem in this field when there are people who don’t understand something or have misconceptions about someone based on the medications they have to take. I know there are a lot of people who abuse pain medications, but there are plenty like myself who have serious pain and depend on those meds just to be able to function, I wake up in so much pain I can’t move, I’ve been taking pain meds for 20 years, I’ve never abused them and I recently got an increase from my doctor that the pharmacist made go away because doctors have enough headaches without worrying about having some have-witted, knows nothing about the patients tolerance to a drug or their physical problem, flagging them and getting them into trouble. now I have to continue to be in pain, because of someone who is narrow minded like you and automatically thinks “pain meds = drug addict”. I’ve never abused my pills not even when near tears from the pain I’m in, that pain was finally going to be relieved and now it won’t. Pharmacists should fill prescriptions, not interfere with a doctors diagnosis and treatment, unless it’s about a contraindiction!!!!

I’m sure that drug had NO APAP in it and since that, it wouldn’t go over the daily limit that is set to save your liver. Because I’m SO sure of that, i’ll agree with you and say the pharmacist did that just to spite you, because I’m sure he/she has a personal vendetta against you and woke up that day with their PDA alarm set to screw Dawn today.

I am eagerly anticipating your response on why it is ok to use alleged government supported data to make your point stronger when it comes to the generic vs brand argument, while you choose to have your own ideas (as some pain patients do pertaining to specific medications) on the subject of the health care plan and purposefully choose to ignore the suggestions being made by the government. which i point out again sir, is the same agency you so strongly cite as your “undisputable” evidence.

because that is socialism, next they’ll tell me i can only have 1 loaf of bread, and that i can can only buy 10 gallons of gas this week to put in my gov’t mandated 4 banger. I do see how the gov’t requiring all generics to be equivalent to the brand names are inconvenient, it saves you and the pharmacy money. But hey i guess all that money we save we can pay for the health care, in the form of taxes. win/win

I suppose you cannot reply to my comments Oh Conradictory One. Maybe if I were to rant and rave and say I’m “legitimately” a pain patient you could snicker at me with a witty comment, but when it comes down to a real discussion you hide behind your counter.

perhaps if your such a pissed off and heartless pharmacist perhaps you need to get into another profession…some people really do have pain!!!! Try to be somewhat understanding…you never know you might strain your back someday filling a pill bottle and be in the same dilemma you jerk!!!!!!!

You’re angry TAP. We get it. By We, I speak for your Pharmer Phriends, who like to put PH in Phront of everything that would normally have an “F”.The addicts, who always manage to save that crumpled up 10 dollar wad in their perpetually sweaty ass palms. The Rest, who wait diligently in line and wonder why it takes approximately 2 hours to apply a sticker on a bottle of 100 meloxi’s, but do not dare ask why. Here are some simple truths all three the above groups share between them:

-We, You, Them are a mere obstacle in place to inform, check,double-check the necessity of medications. While in the past, your profession (apothecary) required the gathering of materials, the preparation of said materials, and the study of the results, which would hopefully lead to eventual use as medications. You being a Pharmer on the retail end of the spectrum merely just “sell” medications now. Nothing adventurous or interesting about that now is their? What is their to respect of a person like that? Isn’t it true that “Sales persons” have always had a negative ring to them? You are after all, just trying to sell me what CVS/Walgreens/Thriftie’s would profit off most right?

-We all know the Pharmacies in America are broken. It is after all, getting even harder for the most seasoned DEA agents to monitor,track, and keep an eye out on the ever changing addict. My point here is how can we have Pharmacies ( Locations to store & medications ) in America if they are fragmented and broken into a million little pieces. Where their are cracks, there are hiding places. Would it not be easier to tell who Cracky McCrackhead and the legit patients are if you had a single datebase from which every person in America who is on a medication ( maybe just controlled ? ) could be brought up onto your computer screen and shown to you when every medication that went down their cake hole was filled/refilled? The only ironic part I find funny about your blog is that you bitch to bitch, but really have only made ONE post on how to fix things. Eh, why try to look for a solution for something when you could just bitch about how people get addicted to drugs that make them feel good. After all, because of your superior resistance to temptation, you have ascended to Godhood.

-We all know that with a working systems in place, it may take time ,but we’ll get there, your job will ( fingers crossed ) be eradicated. After all, the douche bag Ken is sorta right. Let me explain, TAP goes to the hospital for a pain radiating from the vagina and the raging infection already setting up shop there. Super-RN ( we are talking a better brighter future right ) prescribes Tramadol & Amoxi. TAP is given a personalized code based off an equation from 2,343 points on TAP’s pinkie finger. So, the mighty TAP goes to party and picks up his tramadol and amoxi at the AMD(Automated Medication Dispenser) by inputting the code on his discharge instructions and by placing his slime covered pinkie onto a fingerprint reader. It searches the Database, asks for mula, and gives TAP is party gifts.

Viola, the Pharmacist’s as sales people is an ancient headache. Save from some drug addicted asshole cutting off TAP’s pinkie and stealing the code, I think something like what I wrote would work. The Gov’t like to put camera’s up our asses these day’s I don’t see why they can’t strap about 14 CCTV cams to these AMD units.

Side Note: TAP, Ever thought about seeing someone for your Anger issues and Occupation health? Just a thought. They have medication ya know.

Ken,
Are you of your fucken meds????? You are truly the most ignorant, uninformed assholes I have ever had the pleasure to read a post from. It is ignorance such as your that makes our job so challenging. I hope you die from a misfilled prescription from your so desired “vending machine”….you fucking clueless idiot….

Yey!! Howdy all. Ok one I’m not a pharmacist I do have a couple friend’s who are, and this is my opinion and what i have to say, I will give my background first I am about 75% done with my biochemistry degree at OSU, 29 yr old male. I’ve always had depression problems since i hit puberty tried to kill myself my junior year in high school, not proud of it but I got into college quicker that way kinda ironic there, but went through the counseling and am a truly more appreciative person with the helps of currently celexa, Xanax, for depression, here’s the kicker I was in a near fatal car accident two years ago in which i fractured my T4-T8 and also nearly had a complete break at my C1, however they were stable. I followed the sturgeons advice stayed off work and it got better compared to how painful it was and just personally from my experience hospitals don’t give out very many pain meds when they send you home usually from what i’ve witnessed it’s 20-30 of something, which actually makes sense since Pain is the number 1 undertreated symptom. Here’s my only complaint that pissed me off it was at a Kroger Pharmacy i had always gotten my anti depressants which i’ve been on about all of em at some point, and at the time it was Xanax .5 mg 3 times a day that enables me to go to work and function with out severely messing somebody up as I am very aghoraphobic now heres the kicker about a year of no pain meds and me working bak out after my restrictions were lifted my back started acting up got x rays showed some narrowing was given darvocet no problem getting that crap filled as it didn’t work at all. Then I went up to Hydrocodone 5/500 4 pills a day which worked for a while, well as u all know the longer you take opoid medication eventually it doesn’t help the pain. so my dr. put me on the norcos ordered MRI’s now this was last xmas I was literally going out of town for xmas my refill was due on xmas day, I called them up a week before and brought it up and asked if there was anyway I could pick it up before close xmas eve as we were leaving to southern ohio, the tech and pharmacist accused me of trying to get them filled on that day a week early and yelled at me told me i shouldnt be on xanax and norcos together and i have been on xanax for to long 5 years. One i wasnt calling about the xanax as i had plenty left as i only take them as needed which has never been 3 a day, and i personally don’t know how someone could go through a 30 day supply of xanax in 2 days as some ppl stated, however she judged me by what I was prescribed and heard what she wanted to hear not what i had actually said so I ended up calling her the C-bomb and went in with my father who is the head of the narcotics bureau and spent a lot of money to have me put through a private hospital to be evaluated bottom line is i respect pharacists to an extent i enjoy talking to them if they’re not gonna give me shit like that Kroger did that day as i just plain enjoy a good mind and pharmacist’s are smart they have to go through tons of school problem being they were invading my doctor/patient confidentiality rights I sued them for slander for judging me and not listening which ensued the pharmacist being suspended by the narcotics bureau, as i can’t get around with out actual help and yes they are addictive however god gave us opiate receptors for a reason and i believe it was for when we were in pain. After that incident my back has gotten completely worse i’m currently on up to 6 oxycodone 10/325 I’ve spent tons of money on MRI’s EEG’s EMG’s I switched to CVS across from kroger and I’ve never been given one problem or harassed and i get anywhere from 180 every 30 days to 240 every 30 days, and i was switched from xanax to valium to aid as a muscle relaxer as i now also have bulging discs from my L5-S1 with bilateral narrowing and spondyl something can’t remember off the top of my head, I can tell you I am dependent on the oxycodone after being on such high doses for so long, I see pain Dr. take drug tests have pill counts. for the dr’s knowledge as i’m taking them as prescribed I have yet to run into a problem with CVS over my meds, they’ll even have 240 percocets counted out for me in 15 minutes where kroger used to take an hour and CVS is much larger. So I guess my point is is not all pharmacists are pricks but if the prescription is always from the same doctor which is the same dr i’ve seen since i was 13 yrs old, I believe they should mind there own business CVS even fixed it with my insurance before i was switched to oxycodone from hydrocodone cuz it wasn’t time for a refill cuz i ran out early due to the hydrocodone not working much for the pain anymore so the dr. called in another script til i could see him for the med change. Only crappy part now is it’s a hastle since oxy requires a new RX everytime means a dr visit every month. Now that it works it just doesnt work that long 4 hours which is why the last time instead of putting me on oxycontin time released he is talking about methadone which i’ve heard a lot of negativity about. So i guess my question is what makes some of you think you’re god and judging people because of there medical conditions as long as the RX is legit it is of no concern to you. I can honestly say they don’t inhibit my cognitive ability at all, as I still get straight A’s in Organic chemistry and all of my calculus differentials and all. So really who are you to judge someones medical condition, your job and training is to calculate dosages make sure it is what the dr. prescribed that it’s a legitimate script and if the patient has any questions, and at most if there is a dangerous possiblity of a certain side effect or allergy to make the client aware, as they aren’t your patient they’re your client and the dr’s patient. Not knocking u but thats just how it is, Sorry about the typos i don’t have my glasses on and my back is killing me sitting here. If an actual pharmacist here that doesnt want to be angry pissy would like to explain the benefits of methadone vs oxycodone i would appreciate it.I thought it was just for opiate withdrawals which i found out last saturday I unfortunately have quite bad if i go 6 hours without a dose, as in not craving but shaking chills, vomiting not fun. does the methadone actually work as a pain pill or why is my dr considering the methadone. As to the bickering the ppl thinking pharmacists are a joke job they’re very ignorant pharmacists can be helpful mine helped me find an OTC laxative when i started having problems from the pain medicine and he saved me a dr. visit. My only complaint with the pharmacy workers bloging is we are your clients and the dr’s patient not your patient, secondly if something happens once like when my dr called in another script cuz mine didn’t last the full length she was a good pharmacist and did something with the insurance to get them to cover it next time i went in i had a script of oxycodone they asked if he was switching me and i said Yessum, truth in all questions and acting like god shouldn’t arise until junky behavior starts as getting hostile with u over not getting it. Or excessive requests for early refills, I would like to hear ur responses pharm techs and RX’s only not ignorant jerks like the guy that compared pharmacies to a vending machine he’s obviously got a drug problem thats why they have to be controlled is cuz peeps like you. I dunno if i’ll rmember to comeback so if pharmacy workers could email me at JasonTin@gmail.com put subject line angry pharmacist so i know what it is. If for nothing else just to chat i’ll listen to u complain lol i’m not allowed to work til they do something for my back and its in between quarters right now. Good night all intellgent ppl client or pharmacy worker

ya know some people relly need these meds. reather its from multiple operations on the same thing, are back probloms whatever.
yea some people are stupid and take them to get high when they could just smoke weed its easier to get anyways. but like myself who has multiple operations where they have took about half of mastiod bone by now im sure it really does hurt and ibprofen doesnt do the trick.
i really need my pain meds and for some pharmicist to judge me and and say out load where everyone in the store can hear, its not fair that you have that right.now i bet if you where hurting and the over the counter shit didnt work you would want somthing that did. right?

Ok here’s my view technically by federal law I don’t have to prove shit to you. You’re not the Doctor prescribing it nor did you go to medical school, nor did you examine me. Secondly I treat my pharmacist incredibly nice she’s a very sweet young woman, as in young I mean my age. The only time I witnessed an actual embarrassment was when i took a lady I know with Brain Cancer in their to get her dilaudid and methadone and she made a fool of herself because they didn’t have enough dilaudid on stock for her weekly fill. In that encounter I was a bit embarrassed however I did go off on the general manager for threatening the old lady, she didn’t know what was going on and she wasnt even supposed to be living by herself as she was but she was thick headed. I can understand that or constant early refills. I fractured my back in three spots in a car accident several years ago and have pinched nerves, on top of that I’ve had very bad anziety/rage issues since i was a young teen. I started off on Hydro 5/500 and was also on my xanaz which i had been on since i had tried to kill myself in my late teens, none of that was the pharmacist or the techies business, this is wne i used to go to the Kroger Pharmacy, well after 4 months of that i was up to the 10/325 Norcos and again in pain i didnt care, It was coming up on christmas and my family was leaving town when i called the kroger pharmacy to ask if i could pick them up one day early the tech not even the pharmacist of whom at the time i had went to high school and college with had the nerve to tell me one that i shouldnt be taking those medicines for as long as I have and that I was a drug addict and they wouldnt be filled on the day i called and even at that not til the day they were due, she was so ignorant actually wrong word such a dumbass she thought i was asking for them right then on that day a week before i even left for my holiday trip to see my family, so i switched to CVS oh and btw unfortunately along with my attitude i have connections and relatives in the narcotics beaurau and DEA so guess what she was fired the next day and the DEA forced the pharmacist to go before the STate board. I don’t play nice when you hastle me and treat me like shit because you can’t listen and I can get your ability to dispense any controlled substance wiped revoked. So know to CVS where i started this little response to pharmacists and the original douche that no offense i’d prolly shoot you in the head execution style if you had treated me as a drug addict prolly in front of your kids or maybe i wouldve made you watch them go. Current CVS the pharmacist manager and the other pharmacist are extremely nice to me, and all my medications are controlled so you speak of non important meds well all mine are controlled oh except my celexa asshole. I was on 120 mg of oxycodone a day for a year, i always took them my script on the 28th day of the month and they always filled it in 10 minutes for me so i could be on my way, i was switched to valium off the xanax to help with anxiety and the musle spasms increasingly in my lower back which due to medco had to be done through the mail so they could get their money and force me to go away from my retail. So a year goes by and i go into the dr. because of occuring medical problems they think they’re seizures go have tests nope, always exhausted i get a sample of nuvigil and i ask to be taken off the oxy 10 mg’s and put on vicoprofen 7.5/200. First couple weeks were a bit rough but then only the weak willed cannot stop taking something. Still no problems from my pals at CVS they just ask me because of the close dates if he switched my dosage meds, and i said he sure did no more oxy for me. Continued to get more fatigued after the next month i quit taking valium went back and asked for adderrall xr and got it with a referral to a nuerologist as everything had come back negative. So I see the nuero we go over my meds which i was down to two a day on the vicoprofens and just taking advil liqui gels with a descent effectiveness, couldnt help slumping over and passing out. so he goes over the whole CII of Adderrall and how i need a diagnosis to maintain that because i asked as it worked very well. Sleep Clinic I sleep all night go to get up fall over bradycardia without the adderall, so i go get my results and guess what i have seizure activity in my brain and I’m narcoleptic thats right i fall asleep into REM sleep in under a minute and lose control of my muscles. Now we got me completely off the vicoprofen which isn’t to bad some days one would prolly really help the pain of walking, however now i must take 400 mg of provigil a day which is what a CIII i believe and 40 mgs of Adderall a day, which will be getting uped on my next visit. Now no problems with my friendly pharmacists insurance refuses with out pre auth i pay full price and get the pre auth and get my refund, now until my next appt i can pick up my adderall as no refills on that and i give it to the pharmacy and they keep it on file for when i need it. Well guess what going to see my dying grandfather to shoot some firearms and american and family tradition, and go to church with him as i prolly wont have that choice, so i call them up and ask them if i can get it fillled they tell me sure 25 minutes shouldnt be a problem.day 26 out of 30. so i go over and the pharmacist whom i know apologizes and said it can be filled but the insurance is denying it until the 30th day Medco, their ass is on my plate next. However I was still very polite to her said no problem hun i have enough for most my trip but i wont be driving home. Ahhh but pharmacists like you mr. whatever your name is your the type of person i shouldnt take my meds and fall asleep at the wheel and hopefully kill your entire family you have no Omerta whatever the hell you are and deserve to have the shit beat out of you. Nice pharmacists sure i’ve helped them deal with my insurance calling myself so they wouldnt have to do that work, but the rude ones like you, you’d know real fast if you called me an addict or gave me shit as you would be going in front of the board with the DEA right their to provoke your license so maybe you need to go to the dr and get put on an anti depresant and some anxiety pills you asshole. Not all pharmacists are assholes like the douche bag. He just needs his skull cracked!!

I thought provigil and adderall had multiple uses. Adderall is one of the many drugs they use to treat narcolepsy. If there is no cure for narcolepsy ….wouldn’t it make since they use medication daily (adderall,desoxyn)or some form of amphetamine to treat their disorder?
When used correctly, there is small chance it becomes addictive, right?
I doubt sufferers want to fall asleep in middle of eating their Lucky Charms.

I think perhaps instead of medication, Jason may simply need to take a couple of breaths a day and he’d be feeling MUCH better.
I have been in retail pharmacy for almost fifteen years. I have been dealing with my herniated discs for many years taking advil and occasional vicoprofen. Now I am dealing with cancer, take oxycontin and percocet. Please… You have my permission to shoot me if I ever sound like one of THOSE fuckstains. I have been able to cut way back on my narcotic intake through accupuncture. Remember… SHOOT ME!!! Keep up the ranting TAP, you’ve got my vote!

Pharmacists are vending machines. Extremely expensive college educated vending machine that exist to protect the lazy public from themselves.

The whole prescription system stands in the way of liberty and natural selection.

If Rx meds could just be purchased like a pack of smokes, then some of the morons that TAP always bitches about would die from dangerous drug interactions/overdose. Of course, those who are not morons would consult a doctor or pharmacist before choosing to take a drug.

What a hoot. I’m way late to the party, but I can’t help posting. It’s amazing that people think MDs have the same depth and breadth of knowledge regarding medication as pharmacists do. Certainly, they will be familiar with medication in their field, and educated enough to know what to prescribe for what, but that is the end of it.

The technician counts the pills, the technician labels the bottle, the technician gets paid very little to do this. Together, the technician and pharmacist spend hours trying to figure out what your doctor wrote, contact your doctor for that missing DEA number, contact the doctor when the insurance comes back with a “screw you” prior auth because they want you to use some medication that you already tried and proved ineffective. After that they spend hours on the phone fighting with your insurance company to make sure you get the medication you need on time.

But that is just the beginning. Where will you be when your vending machine doesn’t know that the other vending machine at the other grocery store gave you a medication with a deadly interaction. Where will you be when you go to two different doctors for two different things and they write two scripts that interact? Where will we be when our rights and freedoms are granted so some crooked, profiteering doctor hands out oxy scripts like candy and the “patients” sell their off the shelf acquired spares to your kids?

Ken, and a number of you others: does your eloquence equal your intelligence? Have you ever worked in retail (pharmacy or otherwise)? If not, you should probably just keep your insane, profanity ridden walls of text to yourselves.

I’m sorry, I am a one hour photo guy, and I’m used to dealing with the public. Everyone who spends too long at it ends up with some anger. When I stand in line behind morons taking a half hour to abuse technicians and pharmacists who are only trying to help, who could hand me my (ready) RX in the time it takes to swipe my debit card, I’m the one suppressing my urge to sock the morons (or at least tell them off).

Take an active role in your own health care, by all means read up about your condition and meds on the net. Talk up your doctor instead of just snatching the script and walking out. Then see what your pharmacist has to say. They spent that time getting educated so they could give you information that can save you money, save your life, and be there at 3 AM at your local 24 hr Walgreens to tell you how much Tylenol is safe for your child.

Ive really enjoyed reading all this. I recently returned to college and work part time at a Caremark/CVS call center. People call in to get refills OK’d, they tell us which one I check it, goes through or it doesnt. Man people flip the hell out when their script for “The Good Stuff” doesnt go though. Some even try to get me to OK them, which I obviously cant do, saying they know I can, I just dont want to. Im sure its only a small taste of what Pharmacist and the Techs deal with, but I cant hardly see straight sometimes when I leave work.

On a second note. Im a recovering addict, Ive been clean for nearly 3 years now.. Pills, pills, pills,, ect… All that ran through my mind,, every day. I was a robot. I would walk into the ER or the Doctors office limping in agony,, get a couple scripts,, Id go bouncing out of the waiting room like a baby bunny. One thing Ive realized after getting some clean time behind me. The asshole pharmacist who I allways gave hell to,, pissed because he or she would call me on my bullshit; was simply someone doing their job .. They werent plotting against me, there was no secret weekly pharmacist meeting where they decided “Lets fuck with this guy for no reason today”..

Im glad I read all this, I did everything you all write about. The conniving, the lying,, ER visits,shameful stuff. Not all addicts are people who can be helped, Ive met so many people in NA the past couple years who are complete assholes who simply dont give a shit.

One of my schemes when I was pill seeking was having different pharmacies on different days call my doctor to get refills OK’d. Example: The 3rd of this month have Walgreens call one in that was filled the 3rd of the previous month, it would get OK’d. The following week Would have a different pharmacy call one in (to the same Doc or assistant). That pharmacies refill date would be different (from a different script) so it would get OK’d.. I also had more than one Doc doing this. Its crazy to look back on. And to the person that wrote you would die from 30 xanax in 2 days.. You would be suprised at how many pills a person can stuff down their throat after abusing them for several years and biulding up a HUGE tolerance. At the end, A 30 count bottle of both Hyrocodone and soma would be gone in 2 to 3 days.

Woke up in the hospital one day, didnt know how I got there. Wasnt an overdose,, severe resperitory (SP?) depression. Read that Resp Dep warning label hundreds of times, PFFT what do they know.. I just remember feeling like shit for a couple days. My mother found me unconcious in my garage and called an ambulance. Oxygen levels were crazy low.. Started having withdrawls in the hospital,, they got me through it; havent looked back. Sorry this was so long. If anyone wants some insight from a former seeker feel free to email me..alienpooh@operamail.com

Ken is precisely the reason why a legitimate user of LOW DOSE pain medications like me has to suffer.

I have a bad back. I mean a really bad back. Failed back syndrome. Motrin junkie (can I have a liver please?), pretty much suffering most of the week.

I also worked in healthcare 20 years ago and know the pillseeker personality well.

Presently I take Vicodon 5mg, PO, HS so that I can get sleep. Don’t take them during the day. I am a professional (engineer) and that shit would ruin my career. Hence, pain is preferable to becoming a bum.

I was recently given soma in place of Skelaxin P.O/HS for associated back spasms.

Ever take soma and vicodins together? WOW! Ken, you’d love it.

I myself am fortunate enough to suffer from dysphoria where most people experience extreme euphoria (goes with all sched II’s and III’s for that matter). This negative feedback keeps me from becoming a Ken.

Yesterday I had a facet joint injection. Told the doc “keep this shit (SOMA), it makes me friggin’ nuts.

A patient prescribed vicodin and soma gives back the soma because he doesn’t like the super high. I think his jaw dropped. Who gives back the equivalent of heroin?

Someone that wants to keep his life, that’s who.

Here’s the problem that I have with the Ken’s of the world. I get 30 5mg Vicodins per month. One per night. And trust me, I take it every night. At least 4-5 times a month I take 2 at night because of severe pain.

Once in a while I don’t have pain. Guess what? I don’t take it. How fucking novel is that???

I am afraid to tell my pain management doc that I double dose at times because he has to deal with so many Kens. I don’t want to be labeled a “Ken”.

I won’t go to the pharmacist early because he/she probably deals with a dozen “Ken’s” a day.

I certainly wouldn’t blame him for giving me the cross-eyed “ohh shit, another Ken” look.

So, I effectively steal relief from the future for those bad nights now.

And 4-5 days at the end of the month life is hell. But I deal with it.

Because being labeled a “Ken” is worse that having to deal with the pain.

Ken is right about legitimate use of controlled substances. I also see a lot of people using CS getting upset and being defensive about what is posted on this site.
I would like to also apologize for those legitimate patients of CS who exceed their daily dosage, then look for early refills or obtain duplicate prescriptions, and do so only because the Vicodin does not work. What they need to do is tell their Doctors the medication isn’t helping the pain. For Chronic pain patients many doctors will discontue Hydrocodone/APAP and try a stronger medication like Percocet 7.5 or Oxycontin 20.
In New York state we use a mature prescription monitoring program which began 35 years ago (we are considered a model PMP state). Patients are required to tell Doctors what others CS meds are being prescribed while Doctors can access the state PMP database. All CS (CII-CV) must be handwritten on Official NY State serialized prescription pads and delivered to the Pharmacy, and the state makes it clear; no Pharmacy cannot dispense a refill earlier than 7-days.
NYS began state monitoring of CII was back in the mid 1970’s. Benzodiazepines in C-IV were added in the late 1980’s and several years ago all CII-CV prescriptions were added.
I believe with your stats’s PMP things will be less stressful since the state will flag “those problems” and inform the doctors. Meanwhile you can tell the patient, “I can’t fill this Vicodin, it’s too early. Sorry the state will not allow me to refill it for another 10 days”.
And for the New York Pharmacist who just cannot be bothered by those persistent New Yorker’s determined to fill a naughty RX. Tell them, “You want it filled? Then you can either take Metro North to Connecticut or the PATH train to New Jersey and try to get it filled. Now get the fxxk out of my store and don’t come back”.

Wow, I am finishing up my 2nd year in medical school, there is a pharmacist in my class who said similar things to those on the site. I mean obviously I have no idea how the “life after school” is, but wow, why are many pharmacists so hostile, Doctors don’t feel that way about you. Although I hear about prescription pain medication being abusived and all, but there’s no excuse for the statements here.

I don’t care if 100 people come in on Xmas eve within an hour all with prescription for potent painkillers, You don’t “assume” they are drug addicts and try to “get to the bottom of it”, you believe they are in pain and do what you can to get them relief.
That is why you entered into healthcare, to help people, if you wanted to find drug abusers you would have pursued a career in law enforcement.

“That is why you entered into healthcare, to help people, if you wanted to find drug abusers you would have pursued a career in law enforcement.” –> Do you think we like being the narc police? The fact that a significant amount of the Xmas-Eve-narc-fillers are indeed trying to pull something ( hm, 13 days too early, coincidence? ) speaks enough as far as I’m concerned. Fill dates don’t lie; if it’s been the proper amount of days since the Rx was last filled, no problem! And we ARE helping people; part of the responsibility of a pharmacist is to prevent people from doing harm to themselves, i.e. preventing them from becoming addicted to Vicodin, hence the role of the narc police.

And no, we don’t assume everybody who wants their Xanax and Norco filled Xmas Eve is a crackhead. They have to prove that they’re a problem to us before they’re treated as such. It’s easier with some than with others, though, particularly if we’ve had problems with them in the past.

This is why so many pharmacists are hostile, particularly about this issue. In the words of TAP ( paraphrasing ), we shovel shit all day long, eventually everything starts to smell like shit after a while. If you don’t believe that, work as a pharmacist for a while, and get burned on a few narc scripts.

And lastly, why would you come on a pharmacy blog entitled “The ANGRY Pharmacist” and not expect anger? I don’t judge physicians because I’m NOT a physician. Sure, I silently curse them when we get scripts for Effexor 75mg PO QD, scripts with no signature, etc. etc. etc., but you’re human just like we are. That’s fine; mistakes happen. Above all, don’t judge us until you’ve been there, done that. That is my main rule. . . and yes, it works both ways.

Well said John. This guy needs to change his shitty profession. Yah there are some shady individuals but there are people like me in chronic pain and I could are less about vicoden. I have actually dropped my meds ( not vikes) in the garbage disposal but just dealt with it. Didn’t call in whining and anyways you are NOT a doctor we are NOT your patient. I like how pharmacists play the God card and try and override doctors. It’s funny. Please let me know what pharmacy you work at so I can avoid you and your judgemental ways. See this pisses me off….opiate junkies leaving shitty tastes in peoples mouths and chronic pain people not being able to be treated like human beings….instantly judged right off the bat. What do you care anyways. Do your job give the customer their meds, call doc if fishy….simple. Stop stressing out and like I said CHANGE YOUR PROFESSION! but don’t work with people. It doesn’t seem like you play well with others. Yikes.

I noticed pharmacists and whoever else throwing around crackhead a lot when speaking of someone who is on opiates/benzos/carisporodal yadda yadda,,when did the local pharm start cooking up rocks? And I am pissed I cant get my norcs 2days early. Because2 days is a big fucking deal right. Thank you doc for first prescribing those feel good yummys and thank you pharms for warning me about the potential of ABUSE. Fuck you and your cs dick licks.

I just wanted to let you know that I absolutely LOVE your blog, I find it so hillarious to read. I am not a health care professional, but I know that working in any kind of retail typically sucks….especially when you deal with difficult people all the time who blame all of their problems on you. Actually, I am reading this on from the other side of the fence…..the drug user side (DUN DUN DUN! :p). However, I suppose that I am a rarity among this group of “crackheads” (haha) because I don’t constantly hound my pharmacy for early refills or scream at them when I don’t get my way.I am also not a chronic pain patient and I am not constantly (every single month) receiving narcotics. I only get them every once in a while with a few refills. When they run out, I know that’s all I get for now.I just wait until the date I can fill them, and then enjoy the hell out of them. 🙂
What addicts (or just people who enjoy using drugs) don’t seem to realize is that them not getting their refill early or whatever the case may be IS NOT the pharmacists fault. Your hands are legally tied and understandibly you don’t want to lose your license. I understand and respect that. The real motherfuckers are those people who enforce laws to make certain drugs illegal (or illegal without a prescription), such as the DEA. THEY are the ones who irritate me personally, not the pharmacist who has a license to protect.
Whether people realize it or not, you all are extremely useful. I am deathly alergic to sulfa medication and it was a pharmacist who alerted me that a medicine my dipshit doctor prescribed HAD SULFA IN IT. I was so appreciative that they were there to tell me that, because I would have been seriously fucked otherwise. Even though I do enjoy using drugs recreationally (completely of my own free will, my own fault, whatever), some of these people leaving comments just sound like a bunch of retards. I know you all enjoy your drugs, god knows I enjoy them too, but whining like a little baby bitch that you can’t get your refill early is just retarded.
Pharmacists will NEVER be replaced by machines, for the job is more than just “filling bottles.” I’m sure that it is WAY more difficult of a job than I can even fathom. Even though I am not a pharmacist, I think it is disrespectful the way some of you all talk about these people. They went to school for a long time, are well educated and should be respected for it. I do hope there comes a day when narcotics and other drugs will be available for anyone over a certain age to obtain WITHOUT a prescription, but I realize that doesn’t rest in the pharmacists hands….it rests with our law makers. Until that day comes, I will not be treating you all like some kind of “pusher man”…..that’s NOT what you went to college to become.

I do like to get high, but that being said, I also have legitimate chronic pain that no one will do anything for because of the “opiate problem” in Maine where I live. The word on the street is that the doctors (including the pain clinic doctors around here who I have also seen) are getting very large cuts in the malpractice insurance to NOT prescribe opiates to try and get them off the streets. In order to manage my pain when it gets unbearable, I have to make calls to friends who make calls… and the prices are not pretty. Basically, I look at it like, if I am paying an arm, a leg, and a testicle just for pain relief, I may as well get warm and fuzzy too. Let me add that I’m no junkie- we’re talking once a week at most here (and this has been going on for a few years).

I have tried all the other, non-narcotic options that doctors have offered me- from aleve/ibuprofen/*insert other OTC meds that don’t work here* to acupuncture to lidocaine patches to diclofenac to physical therapy to chiropractic therapy… what else? Nerve blocks, stretching, cryotherapy, ice, heat, flexeril, the little electrode stimulating machine thing- I mean, you friggin name it. NOTHING WORKS. I smoke weed at night just to sleep because the pain is so bad it keeps me up. It doesn’t help with the pain, but it helps me sleep and numbs me up mentally a little.

I’d GLADLY give it up and suffer with the pill counts, the piss tests and pain contracts- whatever they fucking want- just for a few lousy 5mg hydrocodone a day. And trust me, that is a MUCH smaller dose than the one I buy on occasion from my “pharmacy” when it is in stock, but at the end of the day, I just want pain *relief*; not even *elimination*. I would settle for RELIEF. But these doctors won’t even give me that.

Did I mention that because of this bullshit “opiate problem” in Maine, my husband, who has rheumatoid arthritis and is trying to get established on a medication regimen that works (he’s trying Humira right now), can’t get anything- even temporarily- so that he can work? “We don’t do that here,” he was told, after also being told it takes up to two months for the Humira to work, and after informing the rheumatologist that the cortisone shot in his elbow didn’t work.

Anyway, do I like to get the warm and fuzzies? Sure I do, and I can admit it. At this point though, it’s mostly to dull the psychological anguish of getting bent over and raped up the ass to the tune of over $1.50/mg just so I can know what it is like to not be in pain that is so bad that I don’t even want to wake up.

@TAP: Your blog is great, and I will continue to come back and read your rants. I work with the public too, and it seems that no matter HOW much you make, working with the public fucking sucks. I had no idea. I have always treated my pharmacist (at Rite Aid) with respect because, well, she’s a fucking human being, and the pharmacy is always very obviously busy and understaffed. I feel really badly for her, which is why I always drop off my scripts and tell her I’ll come back in the afternoon/tomorrow.

I am sure there is the occasional emergency, but I never did get why most people seem to think that they are *so* important that they need their script RIGHTFUCKINGNOW and have the right to treat everyone like shit. I have seen what they have had to deal with over the phone with peoples’ insurance companies *ahem*medicare*ahem*, and then watch them try to explain it to the old lady ahead of me in line… it’s not pretty. I feel bad for you guys.

I wanted to ask a quick question. I’ve been searching around the internet and found this site, I don’t know if it can help in anyway asking, hopefully I get some reply. But I’ve been recently been taken off Hydrocodone 10/660mg. It sucks because I think I developed some sort of dependency towards the pill. And I was looking over for some online pharmacies such as meds-xpress,where I found them through pharmacy reviewer, overseas pharmacy forum and ioplist. I’ve asked some members around about them and many say they are EXPENSIVE, But looking at the prices they seem cheaper then what I would pay if they where prescribed without any insurance. Anyhow I asked a few members that have used that site and so far they’ve said he is a good vendor. But my question is how safe is it buying online? I asked in the forums and all I receive mostly is go ask my doctor or they can’t give any legal advice. I’m not looking for legal advice, I’m just wondering how safe it is to buy online. I want to either refill myself on hydros or Percocets since that is what most of the people seem to be buying from that site but I thought I Would come here wondering about it. The site you can take a look at is: meds-xpress.com Hopefully I can get a honest reply here.

The future of the pharmaceutical industry is heading in the direction of mail out pharmacies, like the ones the Veterans Administration uses quite successfully; however, there will still be a need for pharmacists to compound drugs, and mix various IV medications for a myriad of diseases/disorders. I have to have an infusion every 2 weeks, and I am very glad the person mixing my lifesaving meds is not someone with just a High School education. I am very glad the person mixing my meds had to go to school, and be licensed by the state to practice pharmaceutical medicine. Angry Pharmacist, I find your blog to be quite a hoot. I see people doing the very things you blog about all the time at the pharmacy. I have even been guilty, a time, or two, of going off on a pharmacist. It wasnt that I was angry with the pharmacist, not at all. I have a severe, and painful disease, and go through the mill making sure my doctor writes my script in time, for it to be mailed to me, before I run out. The pharmacist just happens to get in the line of fire because they are the most visible. Kinda like a Quaterback taking the heat for his team losing. Having said all of that, I apologise, on behalf of all of those who cross the line, and that includes me a time or two. Good luck, and try some anger management.. oh yeah, that is what this blog is for, anger management. 🙂 BTW, I have a background in Medicine, including the pharmaceutical trade. What you gripe about is very true.

Im an autoimmune disease patient. I do take pain meds. I also hate holidays, because either the pharmacy or the dr.’s office is closed. What I dont understand is whay theses peeple wit leegeetimate payne prooblems neever canned speyl thyngs rhyte?

You fools! Can you not read between the lines and know that “Ken” is the alter ego of TAP? “Ken” is too well-spoken and opinionated to be an actual “patient” of any of us. TAP is merely using your self-righteous posts as fodder for his amusement! (Fine prank, TAP! Fine prank, indeed!) I am a PharmD, and I am so f*cking sick all of you “holier-than-thou” pharmacists coming on this blog to complain about all of this bullshit you deal with on a daily basis. Enough, already! I’ve been in “the trenches” for long enough to know that dealing with the “unwashed masses” is a part of this highly paid job. Luckily, I have been fortunate enough to find a job that allows me relief from the general pajama-pants wearin’, sweaty ass-crack-smellin’, toothless hillbilly, soma-suckin’, Lexus drivin’, don’t have no money fo day baby’s medicyn, but always gots money fo cigs, nails an’ tats, public. But, for real, please stop complaining. You’re giving me a bona fide distaste for all of the uppity pharmacists who I used to copy notes from after I spent a few weeks fishing and not going to class to learn how to waste my expensive education on these bottom-feeding pieces of societal-leeching shit. Thanks.

Wow!, Alot of anger here. I am not a pharmacist or a Dr. I am a recovering Vicodin addict and stumbled across this blog. The first thing that caught my attention was the anger and cursing. Very unprofessional. I used to be one of those “fuc***g addicts” that you called an idiot and wished that I would o.d. And die. I didn’t choose to be an addict. I have degenerative disc disease and bulging and herniated discs pinching my nerves and needed the prescription that my Dr. Gave me. However, I built a tolerance to the medicine and began to need more, NOT BY CHOICE. I recognized the problem and told my Dr. I was taking more than he was prescribing me and inquired what could be done. HE DOUBLED My script !!! To 8 a day. Never once did he tell me how addictive the drug was nor did I know anything about withdrawal. I was one of those 20 something “idiots” that you mentioned. I took great offense at the statements made about those f..ing idiot addicts. Maybe, some of your anger should be directed towards some, not all, of the many Dr.s who willingly and knowingly are CREATING addicts. I am know 40 something and lived the hell of addiction for many years, I wouldn’t expect you to understand what that is like, but maybe you could at least avoid the condemning statements about addicts. I challenge you to take 4 Vicodin a day for 6 weeks and try to quit taking them. GOOD LUCK! I wish all of you the very best of life and God’s blessings.

I have my doubts that you are a true pharmacist due to your bountiful use of profane language. I’m guessing you are at most a pharmacy technician since not nearly as much schooling is needed and I find that most people of higher education tend not to speak like a drunk sailor.

However if you are indeed a pharmacist, and your life is so unbearable, QUIT! Thank heavens if you are a pharmacist so you can snatch a medicine to help you with your pathetic case of chronic complaining.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Ken’s unhinged ranting, I have had many issues with pharmacists who have the ability to invoke so-called conscience clauses to avoid providing services or certain types of medication for reasons of religious or conscience. I believe this to be a dereliction of duty and not within the purview of any medical professional. I’m all for the Doctor or Pharmacist providing information to their patients, but I draw the line at refusing to provide service on “moral” grounds. Your job is to dispense prescribed medication and information on said medication, not to impose your “moral” beliefs on your patients. Spare me.

I agree with a lot with those telling the Pharmacists who like to voice there opinions about what they think you should or shouldn’t have, to go FUCK OFF go back to school and become a real Doctor. Your a pill DO WHAT YOUR TOLD fill the scripts and shut the hell up!!!!!! You arrogant fuck !